Winter Journeys
by CharlesTheBold
Summary: Joan and her friends test their maturity by each setting out on a separate journey during Christmas of senior year. COMPLETE Please review
1. Eighteen

**Winter Journeys**

_(Author's Note: This story is part of a series that imagines the lives of the JOAN characters after May 2005. Previous stories in the series are REVELATION OF JOAN, RURAL ARCADIA, LOVE AND HONOR, and AUTUMN RITUALS, but they don't have to be read before this one._

_On June 23 I made some major changes in this story, dropping the first two chapters to speed up the action. This new chapter 1 is the old chapter 3 and has been extensively revised._

_Thanks to LostSchizophrenic for beta-ing this story.)_

**Chapter 1 Eighteen**

It was Sunday, December 4, the day before Joan's 18th birthday. Her parents had decided, in honor of the special occasion, to rent the ballroom at the local hotel and invite every conceivable guest. And since it would be easier for many of those to get there on a weekend night, they had scheduled it for Sunday night, deliberately timing it to run past midnight into the actual day.

Joan, putting on her dress in her room, looked at herself in the mirror, wondering if she was showing too much décolletage. Finally she decided against it, turned toward the bed where several other dresses were laid out.

And found Judith standing behind her.

"Yikes!" shouted Joan. Then she turned around once more to stare at the mirror, wondering why she hadn't seen Judith materialize. "No reflection?"

"No, dead people don't have one. Didn't you ever watch BUFFY?"

"I don't care about the metaphysics. It's great to see you again, Judith, even if it's just on this side. When was the last visit? Halloween?"

"Yep. Been busy."

"Ghosts are busy? Doing what? Haunted-housekeeping?"

"Oh, I have missions, just like you."

"What kind of missions?"

Judith looked puzzled. "They're in the afterlife, and they're sort of hard to explain. But nothing was going to keep me from your birthday."

"Thank you. I suppose being a ghost gives you special powers?"

"Sort of. We don't really regard them as powers, just, the sort of things that go with being a ghost. Walking through walls, being invisible when we like --"

"Sounds like fun."

Something in the word "fun" seemed to sober Judith. "Maybe. But there's one thing that's totally beyond my power. I'll never be eighteen, never be an adult. Enjoy being alive, Joan."

--------------------------------

The number of guests at the party was impressive. Two years ago they were strangers in Arcadia; now look at Joan's circle of friends! Even some of the teachers had come: Harbison, Lischak, and old Driesbach, who had once accused her of cheating but subsequently became a staunch defender of her reputation. Other adults: Father Ken and Professor Begh (who seemed to be talking shop or something) Glynis and Friemann, now married, had come, and there was Elizabeth Groetzman who had acted with Joan in last year's musical. Of course Lily and Kevin had come, and the cousins from North Carolina. But there was one guest Joan was worried about, and ironically the worry was the result of another birthday party.

Luke was only eleven months younger than Joan, almost a fluke of nature, and they had celebrated his 17th birthday last month. The Girardis had invited Grace to stay overnight, in Kevin's old room, something she often did. But in the middle of the night, she had apparently sneaked into Luke's room and offered him a "birthday present", namely herself. It had been intended to be a secret, but Joan had found her there a couple of hours later, naked with her pajamas scattered around the floor. Joan's beloved brother and best friend had entered a new phase of life and left Joan behind.

The rest of Joan's family hadn't been very perturbed, particularly after assurances that the lovers had used "protection" and that Grace wouldn't get pregnant like Glynis. But they had felt honor-bound to tell Grace's parents what had happened, and the Polonskis had been very upset. A rabbi's daughter, losing her virginity at 17, and to a boy outside the faith? Nor were they too pleased when Grace assured them from personal observation that Luke had been circumcised. Grace was now grounded, and specifically forbidden to visit the Girardis.

Joan had been reduced to visiting the Polonskis and asking them to make an exception for her 18th birthday party, a once-in-a-lifetime occasion. They gave in, but Grace still had not shown up.

Adam and Bonnie walked in. Bonnie had been knocked up by some college jerk, and Adam's family had taken her in. She was now at seven months, and looked every day of it. Adam helped her wiggle out of her coat and took it to the cloakroom. A stranger might have thought they were a young couple starting a family. Joan winced at that image. But God had instructed her to invite Bonnie, and could scarcely blame her for coming with Adam. The catch was, she couldn't talk to Adam while Bonnie was there. Just one more barrier between them.

Finally Joan saw Grace come in, and the unconventional girl was actually wearing a dress. Like everybody else, Grace was wearing a heavy coat as protection against the December weather, and started off in the direction of the cloakroom. Joan rushed toward it.

"Hi, she said, as Grace hung up her coat. "Glad you could make it."

"That's your doing," Grace said. She turned around and startled Joan by kissing her on the cheek. "Happy Birthday, and thanks for standing up to Mom."

"Um, don't mention it."

"It's so great to get out of the house. I wish I had a job, like you."

"I don't know if that's going to last. You-know-who warned me that the store was going to need help, it's been bad lately, money-wise." You-know-who was code for God; this place was too public to discuss their secret openly.

"I'm not going to let it get me down. This is my birthday, and I'm going to enjoy it."

"Is Luke here? I need to talk to him. He won't show up at the biology closet anymore, and I want to know why."

Joan sighed, forseeing trouble. She had promised the Polonskis that she wouldn't let the lovers be alone.

--------------------

Bonnie was standing in the corner, a wallflower. She hardly knew anybody here, except for Adam, and the Girardis, with whom she was scarcely on good terms. Fortunately she had a built-in conversation piece. A kindly-looking woman had inquired "Is it your first?" and the conversation had proceeded from there. It seemed that she was a farm woman from North Carolina, distantly related to the Girardis.

"I got a couple of them," Bonnie complained, touching the sides of her belly. "There and there."

"Stretch marks. Yes, I had them when I was pregnant, years ago. Don't worry, they usually fade after you've had the baby."

"Thanks."

"Didn't your mother tell you about them?"

"My mom kicked me out when she found I was pregnant. I'm renting from another family. Nice, but they're all guys. I can't talk girl stuff with them."

"That's terrible. Maybe I can help…"

------

"Hello, Mr. Cavalos," said Grace, recognizing Luke's cousin. She and Luke had visited with the couple during the past summer. In retrospect, those two weeks seemed almost Edenic: love and nature without the complications of sex.

"Uncle Jonathan." he corrected genially.

"Okay, Uncle Jonathan. How's the farm?"

"Doing quite well. In fact, I'm planning on hiring a hand when the kids start coming back from college for Christmas."

An idea struck Grace. She had meant it when she had discussed getting a job, but she didn't want to be a wage slave to some grubby capitalist. Jonathan Cavalos was a known quantity whom she respected. "Can I apply?"

"You?"

"I may be a city girl, but I think I learned my way around last summer. Everything from riding horses to shoveling up sh--, um, stuff."

"I'm not doubting your qualifications, but I don't want to keep you away from home during Christmas."

"I'm Jewish."

"Sorry, I didn't know that. During Hanukkah then."

"I think I'm beyond the 'I made a little Dreidl' stage." _Besides, Hanukkah is basically a family holiday, and I'm not exactly on good terms with my family anyway._

Uncle Jonathan apparently didn't know what a Dreidl was, but Grace had made her point. "Okay, I'll think about it. Hey, there's Luke. Are you and he still together?"

Grace glared at the boy with whom she had been intimate less than a month ago. "I'm going to find out."

------------------------

Joan saw Grace and Luke walk out toward the hallway. Remembering her promise to Mrs. Polonski, Joan dashed after them. Grace, in spite of the kiss she gave Joan half an hour earlier, didn't seem at all happy to see her now. "Butt out, Girardi."

"I promised your mother that I wouldn't leave you two alone, so my butt is staying right here." countered Joan.

Grace snorted. "Everybody is determined to honor my mother and father except me. Doesn't anybody remember 'drinking problem'? Or 'in denial'?"

"That's in the past," Luke said. "I'm trying to fix the future."

"Well, you're doing a stupid job of it. Why won't you meet me in the biology closet? Did you lose interest in me, once you got what you wanted? Now that I've let you pat my ass, a simple kiss isn't fun anymore?"

_Eeew_, thought Joan. _I so did not need to hear that._

"That's not it at all, Grace," insisted Luke. "Your parents don't know how It actually happened. From your parents' point of view, I'm the cad who seduced their daughter and only child. And my whole family is at fault because they didn't protect your virginity. So I'm trying to be as obedient as possible, and try to win back their trust."

"You're a cold, calculating bas----."

"If you say I'm calculating, that's part of my nature, Grace. And I don't consider it cold at all."

"Fine. You don't want to meet, we won't meet. I've been offered a job out of town over the holidays, and I just might take it."

That was a surprise to Joan, since Grace had mentioned job-seeking to her less than an hour ago. But Grace marched back into the ballroom as if she had ended on a note of triumph.

Luke sank down on a hotel bench, looking like he was about to cry. "Less than two weeks after I had it all, and now I'm losing her. Maybe grownups are right; we're just not mature enough to handle sex."

"I think she'll calm down, Luke. And I bet there are some grownups who screw up a lot too."

--------------

"Jane! There you are. Happy Birthday," said Adam in his quiet but intense way. "I made this for you." He handed her a small, round picture, a portrait of Joan herself.

"Oh, it's lovely, Adam! Thank you." She gave him a big hug.

"I was going to give it to you earlier," Adam continued after she released him and he was able to breathe again, "but I couldn't find you."

"Yeah, I must've been with Grace and Luke." After admitting that much, Joan shut her mouth firmly. She was NOT going to quote that conversation.

"Yeah, that happens a lot, doesn't it?"

"What?" said Joan, realizing that his thoughts had gone in a different direction.

"You and Grace and Luke, always together."

So now it was finally in the open. Last summer, God had finally let Luke and Grace into the secret. But Adam had not been included, and that meant that the trio had to meet to compare notes without him. Adam had noticed. Joan had tried to distract him from the obvious during the fall, even during the embarrassment of posing semi-nude for one of his paintings. But it was destined to come up sooner or later.

Adam turned his head. "Ah, there's your Mom. I don't see her often, now that she stopped teaching at school. I need to talk to her." He wandered off.

"Adam--?"

"Happy birthday, Joan," came a familiar voice. Joan turned around to see Old Lady God.

"Is this business or pleasure?" asked Joan curtly, still annoyed about Adam.

"Pleasure, of course. Though I have a word of advice--."

"Thought so."

"Be an adult," God said.

"I can't help that, can I?"

"Physically, no. But you can act like an adult, or a child. Be an adult."

"Okay. Now, I've got a question, and I wish you'd give me a straight answer, in honor of the occasion."

"Ask."

"Adam has known for months that I'm hiding something from him. If I don't tell him about You, he'll feel left out, he does already. If I do tell him, he'll still feel left out, because he's not being treated the same as Luke and Grace. Why can't Adam be in the club, so to speak?"

"It takes all kinds to make a world, Joan. I know because I made all the kinds AND the world. With you and Grace and Luke, I can make a suggestion and you will carry out. But Adam is an artist, and he serves me best by creating his works of art. His inspiration comes from within. A suggestion from another person, even one he knows to be God, won't mean much to him."

"I don't care about the artist side. I just want him to know that I'm not neglecting him. Or at least, not for a bad reason."

"Very well, Joan. In honor of the occasion, when you choose to tell Adam, I will be there to confirm it for you."

"Thanks." Joan scanned the room, looking for Adam, and instead found herself looking at an odd foursome: her rural cousins, Grace, and Bonnie. The Cavalos couple were looking at each other in surprise. Grace was standing besides Uncle Jonathan, and Bonnie by his wife, and the two girls were glaring at each other like a pair of cats about to fight over the same turf. What was THAT about?

"Attention, everybody!" Kevin called out. He held up a small alarm clock, which he had apparently concealed in his chair. "I've got this set for midnight, and now it's only one minute away!"

Joan didn't know at what time of day her mother had borne her, and it didn't really matter. At midnight, it would be December 5, 2005 and she would officially be 18 years old.

Kevin counted the last few seconds aloud, with the rest of the crowd joining in. "Five, four, three, two, one---"

RRRRING!

"There's your wake-up, Joan! Welcome to adulthood."

Joan beamed with pride at her new status. And at the back of the crowd, unnoticed by anybody else, she saw God smile upon her.


	2. Accompanied by an Adult

**Winter Journeys**

**Chapter 2 Accompanied by an Adult**

The next evening the Girardi's celebrated with a relatively quiet dinner at the house, for the extended family: Joan, her brothers, her parents, Lily, and their cousins the Cavalos. Jean Cavalo was explaining a complicated incident at the party.

"It was sort of a comedy at errors. There was a poor girl there who is having a baby and is out of contact with her family. I invited her to spend the holidays with us so I can teach her what to expect--"

"So that's why I invited Bonnie," mumbled Joan.

"Pardon?" asked Lily.

"She said that 'that's because I invited Bonnie'," replied Luke. "It was a last-minute decision, and turned out to be fortunate."

Helen looked back and forth between her two youngest children. She had distinctly heard Joan say something different from Luke's explanation. And though she was used to Joan doing odd things and giving odd explanations, it was disconcerting to hear Luke chip in instead.

"At the same time," said Jonathan Cavalo, "I was talking to the Polonski girl. She was looking for work during the holidays and asked me if we would take her on as a 'hand'. Since she already knew her way around our farm, it struck me as a good idea, so I said yes."

"So what's the problem?" asked Lily. "Even if the two girls don't get along, they should have plenty of space on the farm to avoid each other."

"The trouble," explained Helen, who had visited the farm during the summer of 2004, "is there's only one guestroom. Bonnie and Grace will have to share. Talk about odd couples."

"When we spoke to our son Brian this morning and explained the arrangement," said Jonathan, "he said 'no problem. If the girls don't get along, one of them can move into my room.'"

The group laughed, and the jollity got even stronger when Will remarked, "Be careful what you wish for--"

"So Grace will be away for the holidays," repeated Kevin. "You think you'll survive her absence, Luke?"

Suddenly the joy evaporated and was replaced by tension. Kevin didn't know about Luke's and Grace's night together, or the subsequent estrangement. As Helen tried to think of a distraction, Luke spoke up.

"Actually, I've been making other plans. The counselor told me today that I might have a chance at Harvard. So I thought: why not spend the holidays going up to Massachusetts and looking the place over?"

The matter of Grace was forgotten as everybody reacted to this good news. Unfortunately, it soon ran into trouble with logistics.

"I'd like to go with you," Will said proudly," but I'm afraid there's too much work at the office."

"Lily and I are working on a Christmas pageant at the church," said Helen ruefully. "I promised to paint the backdrop. So I'm afraid--"

"I may slow you down," said Kevin, looking down at his wheelchair. It was very rare for him to make such an admission.

"I think I could go on my own," insisted Luke.

"No, no, you're only 17," said Helen. "You need an adult to travel with you."

"Next year I'll be going off on my own anyway," pointed out Luke.

"That's a structured environment," countered Will. "Dorms, campus, schedules. This time you'll be wandering about in a strange city."

"I'll go with him," said Joan.

It took a moment for that to register. Later Luke remarked that it was like the moment in LORD OF THE RINGS when the heroes took a minute to realize that a hobbit had volunteered for the grand quest. Finally," Helen said, "You're not old enough either, Joan."

"Why not? I'm 18 now. You said he needed an adult; well, I'm one."

"Just barely."

"Is this about 'crazy Joan' again? Because it's not fair. The crazy stuff was a year and a half ago, and it wasn't even my fault. I was poisoned by a tick, not soft in the head."

Helen opened her mouth to argue, then thought better of it_. It's her birthday, her 18th birthday. Don't ruin it with an argument_. "Your father and I will discuss it tonight."

Joan looked dubious, probably suspecting that her parents would just be cooking up an excuse not to let her go. But the appearances were saved.

-----------------

Four hours later Helen was lying in bed with Will, and ready to talk. There was something magical about that bed, as if the simple act of lying there together connected their souls and made all discussions more intimate.

"So what do you think, Will?"

"After thinking about it all evening, I've decided that maybe we should let them go."

_"What?"_

"Joan's right," said Will firmly. "We've been letting that crazy period color our responses to Joan too much. Last spring, somehow, she figured out that Hunter was behind the sacrilege and told me. If I had acted on it, I could have saved myself and the department a lot of embarrassment. But I brushed it off as Joan being crazy."

"And you're going to make it up by letting her go off with Luke alone?"

"Not as a quid pro quo, but I think we should trust her judgement."

Helen hesitated, then finally brought forth the root reason for her fear. "When I went out in the world alone, I got raped."

Will scowled. "I know. But that was a personal tragedy, not a universal ordeal. Joan knows what happened, she knows to take precautions. And don't forget that it's not just Joan. It'll be Luke and Joan, looking out for each other."

Helen found her resolve wavering, now that she had acknowledged the trauma that underlay her fears. "Maybe."

"Let's give Joan her best 18th birthday present, Helen. Trust and independence."


	3. Visits from God

**Winter Journeys**

**Chapter 3 Visits from God **

Joan got her wish -- permission to "be the adult" and chaperone her younger brother on his trip. But two loose strings had to be tied up before she went.

After school on Wednesday, she showed up at her bookstore job, determined to get in touch with her boss Sammy somehow. To her surprise he was actually sitting at the rear at the store, looking at a long computer printout. She could guess what it was.

"Hitting the books?" asked Joan.

"Haha," he said. "Yes, and it's not pleasant reading. Do you realize how much sales have gone down while you've been here?"

_Or you've been not here,_ Joan said to herself, but not out loud. "In that case, maybe you'll be willing to give me next week off. I'm going on a trip with my brother."

"Next week? During Christmas season? Who's supposed to manage the store?"

"You could, couldn't you? Or get some student who wants to make money over the holidays?"

"Suppose I discover that I can manage the store without you, and fire you?"

Joan looked at him, wondering if she should backpedal, when the bell over the front door rang, indicating that a customer had come in. Suddenly Sammy was all smiles.

It was Tough Guy God.

"Um, may I help you?" asked Sammy nervously, as if he expected the visitor to rob the place and kill the occupants.

"You got DVDs?"

"Um, yes, a few."

"I'm lookin' for 'IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE'. Every Christmas I watch it on TV, and it gets me right here." He pounded his chest with his fist. Sammy looked even more nervous at the gesture, as if imaging that fist striking his body at some point.

"I'll look for it," offered Joan.

"Good," said the Touch Guy, planting himself next to Sammy, and towering over him by almost a foot.

"Hmm, I can't find a DVD of it in stock. Will you settle for a VCR?"

"Yeah, I can use a tape." As Joan brought it to the counter, the Touch Guy looked down on Sammy. "Quick-witted assistant you got here. I hope you appreciate her."

"Um, yes."

The Tough Guy paid the price and went out the door. "Now," said Sammy, "as I was saying--"

The bell rang again. Old Lady God walked in, peering around the store and giving the impression of a slightly confused elderly woman.

"May I help you?" asked Sammy.

"I'm looking for a book, SlaughterHouse Five."

"YOU'RE looking for SlaughterHouse Five?" Sammy echoed.

"It's a Christmas present for my great-nephew."

"Oh."

"I've got it," said Joan, who had gone looking for the book while Sammy was wasting time being surprised.

"Thank you, little girl. You always know where to find things. You must be proud to have her as an employee," she added, turning to Sammy.

"Um, yes." He rang up the purchase, and the Old Lady went out.

"As you were saying--?" prompted Joan.

Sammy sighed. "Okay. You've got a good record with customers. You can have your vacation and keep your job. That's assuming that the bookstore stays open at all, and THAT's up to Redding and Associates up in Boston."

"Boston?" echoed Joan. _I think I sense a ripple coming_.

---------------

Later that evening, Joan arrived at Adam's house. Spotting a little girl alone on the sidewalk, Joan was concerned for her safety, then realized that it was Little Girl God.

"Hi," Joan said. "I want to thank you. It looks like you saved my butt back there." She took her hand as she continued toward Adam's shed.

"You're welcome," said the Little Girl, and started giggling.

"What's so funny?"

"How you humans use language. What I saved was your job, and by extension your self-respect and your economic situation. Your _derriere_ was never in danger, but that's what you said I saved."

"Um, yeah, it's a metaphor."

"Actually, it's synecdoche -- the substitution of a part for a whole. In this case, your behind for your entire self. Which, in my opinion, undervalues your self."

"Am I going to be tested on this? Because I'm never going to remember sins and Dutch or whatever."

"Nope. You asked a question, and you often complain that I don't answer, so I did."

By that time they had reached Adam's shed, and Joan didn't have to answer. She knocked at the door.

"Jane! Come in. Hello, little girl."

"She's not a little girl, Adam," said Joan. "She's God."

"Ah, yes," Adam said lightly, obviously thinking that Joan was playing a game with the child. "Well, God, I'm Adam, but I'm afraid Eve isn't here."

"Isn't THAT her?" asked Little Girl God, pointing to a painting in the corner.

Joan followed her pointing finger, and blushed. A month ago, in a desperate attempt to convince Adam she still cared about him, she had posed for a sketch while naked to the waist, on condition that Adam wouldn't look at anything but her bare back. Now he had elaborated a painting around it, an undraped female figure in a forest. If Joan were not feeling embarrassed she would have judged it very beautiful. A well-placed bush hid the lower part of her body, leaving the viewer free to guess whether the figure was totally nude or not. Joan herself had left her jeans firmly fastened.

"Um, yes," said Adam, who was obviously worried if that was suitable material for a little child. "Eve, or a Greek nymph, I haven't decided."

"Or maybe an houri from Moslem legend," suggested Little Girl God.

"How do you--?" Adam stammered.

"As I said," repeated Joan. "This isn't a little girl, it's God. Remember when I told you that I was talking to God, and you thought that I was delirious from Lyme disease? It was true. That's why I've often been distant, or preoccupied, or holed up with Luke and Grace. We've been on missions for God. I wanted you to know that because I'm going on another mission next week."

"I can prove who I am, by telling you something Joan doesn't know," said Little Girl God. She pointed at "Eve" again. "That swirl of paint, you put that in all your paintings. It represents a curl of your mother's hair."

Joan had never known that. Even back when they thoroughly trusted each other, Adam never wanted to talk about his mother's tragic death. He looked in awe at the Little Girl, then turned to Joan.

"So it's true, Jane -- you haven't been distancing yourself at all--". He hugged her tightly, and Joan kissed him lovingly on the lips, relieved that all barriers between them were down.

And now, ironically, she knew that she could go off on her mission with a pure conscience.


	4. Grace's Secret Garden

**Winter Journeys**

_(Author's note: Genetic engineering in food production and the controversy surrounding it are real. The specific project and organization mentioned in this chapter are fictional.)_

**Chapter 4 Grace's Secret Garden**

Grace walked down the corridor of the small, rural North Carolina airport. Jean Cavalo was supposed to meet her, but of course she had to wait behind the security gate. At the moment, Grace was alone.

Grace savored that. Grace always liked to think of herself as the lone rebel, but the fact of the matter was that whenever things got too hot, she could always retreat to the safety of her parents' home. No matter how frustrated she got with her mother's drinking or father's evasions, she had food to eat, and clothes and shelter. And when the tension got too much, she had a second home at the Girardi's. Even when she visited North Carolina before, she had been with Luke.

Now she was by herself. She was estranged from both the Girardis and her own parents. Even God was silent. She would fail or succeed on her own.

And there was another, less intimidating advantage to being here. Back in Arcadia, nearly everybody knew that she had lost her virginity, and it seemed to affect her relationships with everybody. Here, nobody needed to know, or care.

"Hello, Grace," said Jean Cavalo. "Let me help you with that second suitcase."

"Thank you, Mrs. Cavalo."

"Last summer you called me Aunt Jean."

"I can't work for a couple and call them Aunt and Uncle." One of Joan's witticisms came to mind. "It would be like incest."

The older woman laughed. "Jean and Jonathan, then. Diana used our first names, and so can you."

The two emerged from the airport building, and Grace was surprised by the nippiness in the air. But after all, this was December, and North Carolina wasn't that much further south than Maryland. She had just irrationally expected the same hot climate she had experienced last summer. Fortunately she had packed warm clothes.

After getting in the Cavalos' car, Grace asked "What's new? Is Diana still there?" The question was for appearance's sake. She knew that the efficient and attractive farm girl had been one of God's guises, and simply ceased to exist once God no longer had need of that personality. But Grace wasn't supposed to know that, and she doubted that the Cavalos had ever known the truth.

Jean shrugged. "No. Just announced one day that she needed to move on, and did. But she left things in remarkably fine order."

That was probably the best way for God to fade out -- have his character feign wanderlust. It occurred to Grace that it would be difficult for God to play a stranger here, in a sparsely populated neighborhood where everybody knew everybody else.

"Anything else?"

"We're taking part in a new project. Did Jonathan tell you that we donate to a Famine Relief organization overseas?"

"Yes." That was one of the things that impressed Grace enough to take a job with them.

"Some scientists have invented a new genetically engineered form of wheat, which will grow off-season, and might be helpful in the Third World. Do you know about genetically engineering?"

"I've had AP biology this year. There's a lot of controversy about G.E. food, particularly in Europe. They say it hasn't been tested enough, and might have hidden flaws." Grace really had no opinion about G.E. food herself. Some of her anarchist friends were automatically suspicious of Big Science's links with Big Business, but Grace knew too many honest scientific types -- Luke, Glynis, Ms. Lischak -- to share that hostility.

"Europe can afford niceties. But in the Third World, it might make the difference between life and death. So we've volunteered to grow some on our farm and send samples for testing. If it DOES fail, lives will not be at stake. If it succeeds, it can be used abroad with some confidence."

It seemed to make sense. "I'd like to see it."

"I'll show it to you, once you settle in."

Eventually they reached the farm, and Grace took her suitcases up to the guestroom that she had shared with Diana. Bonnie wasn't due to come until tomorrow; until then Grace had it to herself. But she couldn't stay up here at the moment; she had promised to look at the G.E. wheat with Mrs. Cavalo, and so she came downstairs as soon as she could.

Jean Cavalo was standing in the back yard, holding two horses by the reins. Grace hoisted herself onto one of the animal's backs and took the reins, while her boss mounted the other. Grace marveled at the way the powerful animal meekly submitted to her direction. If she were a horse, she would be tempted to rebel against the small and arrogant human species, and throw them from her back. Of course, as a rider, she hoped that such a thought never occurred to her mount.

"The G.E. must be a long ways out, if we need to ride there." she guessed, following her boss's animal.

"Yes, we want to avoid having it cross-pollinate with ordinary wheat." They took a dirt path that seemed to be designed as both a rudimentary road and a boundary between fields. Grace noticed several clumps of horse droppings on the path. Before last summer they would have just disgusted her; now she could just deduce, Sherlock Holmes style, that rides out to the G.E. patch were frequent.

The Cavalos must be used to refuting criticisms of their experiment, because Mrs. Cavalo immediately went back to that subject. "I understand people being afraid of new developments, but all developments were new once. See that cow? Cows didn't always have udders like that. They were bred for producing milk, and big udders were the result. Or take the horses that we're riding. I believe that modern horses are just a few centuries old, the results of intensive breeding. Two thousand years ago they were just ponies. In the Bible they weren't considered important; people rode donkeys, and measured wealth by how many of them and oxen and camels they owned."

"That's interesting. I studied Biblical Hebrew for my bat mitzvah, and I don't think I ever learned the word for 'horse'. You don't need to convince me, Jean. I was just arguing because, well, I like arguing."

Jean laughed. "Yeah, Cousin Helen warned me. There's the special wheat field," she said, pointing.

Grace looked. If she was expecting to see obvious mutants like the X-Men, she was disappointed. What she saw was simply one more field of wavy grain, surrounded by patches of bare earth.

But not quite. "The plants grow too close together, and have to be thinned out occasionally," Jean commented. "The geneticists are working on that, but in the meantime the stalks have to be cultivated by hand."

"That's a big drawback, isn't it?"

"Yes, but in an overpopulated country there isn't likely to be a shortage of labor. The problem is tending it here."

Grace said in the saddle, looking at the field with an odd sense of deja-vu. When she was little her parents used to bring home all the traditional books girls were supposed to like, but Grace had rejected most of them, because the heroines were too goody-good and girly. But there had been one book that she liked: the Secret Garden, about a temperamental girl who learned patience while tending a garden of her own.

The G.E. wheat field was going to be Grace's own Secret Garden.

TBC


	5. Luke in 10D Heaven

**Winter Journeys**

**Chapter 5 Luke in 10-D Heaven**

_(AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've never actually been in Harvard's Computer Center; I'm only speculating what it might be like. If any reader has actually been there, tell me and I'll correct things. The story will still be pretty much valid even if I'm wrong.)_

Luke has spent a miserable month ever since his birthday. Not only was Grace absent from his life, but nobody seemed to understand his point of view.

Friedmann, when Luke visited him shortly after his wedding, couldn't understand why Luke didn't just contact Grace and arrange secret meetings in which they could do what they wanted without her parents' knowing. He even suggested several strategems for evading detection (though he was careful to do so away from Glynis' hearing). On the other hand, Joan's reaction to having discovered the lovers in bed in the first place was one long "eeeeeew".

The fact was that Luke believed in absolutes and universals. When he fell in love with a girl, he didn't just dream of moments of bliss, but of spending his life with her. And part of the ideal was getting himself accepted by her parents, just as his own parents had largely accepted Grace. If a temporary separation from Grace assured their future happiness, well, so be it. One of Luke's heroes, the scientist-philosopher Jacob Bronowski, had written that the ability to defer gratification was one of the gifts that separated man from the animals. Luke was trying to exercise it now.

But, at the bottom, Luke missed Grace terribly. And with no way to satisfy his longing directly, he tried to distract himself. As long as school lasted, he threw himself into all his courses. And with vacation approaching, he had conceived the plan of visiting Harvard, where he had the potential of being accepted. He told himself that even that plan was not really a matter of ignoring Grace. Getting accepted at Harvard, and a year ahead of most students, was something that would probably impress the Polonskis.

Unfortunately, that meant travelling with Joan.

-------------

Luke followed his sister and the bellhop down the hotel corridor. Already it was clear that he and Joan were not exactly compatible travelling companions. On the way from the airport he had been fascinated by the "Big Dig", the innovative underground highway designed to keep Boston traffic snarls off of the surface. To Joan it had been just a hole in the ground. And when checking in, Joan had been all "I am Ms Girardi and this is my kid brother." She had opened a bank account when she started the bookstore job, and their parents had temporarily dumped extra money into account to cover travel expenses and contingencies. That left Luke dependent on Joan for all the cash.

The bellhop unlocked Joan's door, and showed them her room. "Mr. Girardi will be next door. There's the connecting door, but it must be unlocked from both sides, so that nobody can cross over except by mutual agreement." The two nodded. That had been the parents' idea, and it had been a good one, allowing the two to share or not share their privacy as much as they liked.

"I'll take care of Mr. Girardi next. I hope you enjoy your hotel, but it's important to go out and see the city. I'd suggest starting at Old North Church, from revolutionary times. That means you, Joan."

Joan started. As always, the use of her first name by a stranger was a signal. "Bellhop God?"

"That's right, miss."

"Am I doing everything right so far? You said be an adult, and Luke needed an adult escort, so I'm here."

"Yes, miss."

"I'm here, too," said Luke, somewhat miffed that even God considered Joan in charge. "Do you have any special advice for me?"

"Seek knowledge though it be in China."

"China?"

"That's how the Quran puts it. Of course China was a lot harder to get to in Mohammed's day, so it's an intense way to put it."

"Yeah, you don't have to worry about my seeking knowledge."

"Here's your tip," said Joan. "Though you don't really need it, do you?"

"I am playing a human, and nothing human is alien to me," replied the bellhop, pocketing Joan's bills.

They opened the connecting door once he was gone. "What do you think we should do first?" asked Joan.

"One of the guys that suggested I come here is named Desmond Harvey, a physics student at Harvard," observed Luke. "He's English, and said he would stay at the school over the holidays to avoid expensive plane flights to Europe and back. I'll call his cell and see if he's available."

"Cool."

Luke dialed the number. "Hullo? Harvey here."

"Hi. This is Luke Girardi. I've just arrived in Boston, and I was wondering if we could meet."

"Um, that is a bit awkward. I'm working on a project at the college's supercomputer center. But if you don't mind coming here--"

"I'd love it!"

"I'll tell them it's OK to let you in."

"OK. Oh, tell them to let two people in. I'll have a girl with me."

"Righto." He gave directions to the school and the center.

"Have a girl?" mimicked Joan as he hung up.

Luke smirked. He had gotten even for "my kid brother."

-----------------

Seeing the computer center was a bit of an anticlimactic. From the outside it seemed to be a much older institution, and the building had probably been designed for a different purpose. Inside all they could see were desktop computers and dumb terminals. The powerful supercomputer itself was carefully protected and not even visible to the users.

"Pleased to meet you face-to-face, Luke," said Harvey. "And this is your girl friend?"

"Um, actually my sister, Joan. She's interested in seeing the college too." That was a half-truth, since Joan did want to go sight-seeing. Luke was NOT going to explain that Joan was his chaperone. They were so close in age that an outside observer might mistake them for fraternal twins. "Tell me, why are you doing your work here? I heard that college dorms have excellent high-speed connections."

"They do, but they're not sufficient for what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to do simulations of string theory."

"Ms. Lischak -- our A.P. Physics teacher -- mentioned string theory a little, but didn't tell us much," said Joan. "She said it still had a lot of loose ends, and she didn't want to teach us theory that might prove wrong."

Luke was rather proud of his sister in showing polite interest. Two years ago she would just dismissed the subject as so much dorkiness. "I did some reading on my own. They say that strings are 10-dimensional objects. It's difficult to visualize."

"Exactly, which is why I'm trying to represent them on the computer. But ordinary coordinate systems won't work. Even if you had a crude grid with only 10 units on a side, you would need 10-to-the-tenth squares to cover all the dimensions -- 10 billion, in American terminology. And even if you had that much memory, it would take forever to manipulate them."

"I see that now. What do you do about it?"

"Try to calculate a three-dimensional cross-section, and display that on the screen."

He explained his theory for doing this. Luke had trouble following his concepts, and Joan was visibly trying to avoid yawning. Finally Harvey excused himself, saying that he had to visit the "loo", and left the Girardis alone.

"Luke, I thought I understood physics, but what this Harvey guy is saying is just Geek to me."

"Yeah, I'm having trouble following it too. I may ask him to explain it in more detail."

Joan looked exasperated, and Luke could understand. He himself was trying to distract himself from the argument with Grace, and this seemed an intricate enough problem to occupy his attention. Joan, on the other hand, had eliminated the last barrier between herself and Adam, only to find herself stuck hundreds of miles away from him, in a conversation that did not interest her at all.

"Look," proposed Luke. "Why don't you leave me here and go see the sights as our, uh, friend recommended?"

Joan looked tempted, but raised objections. "I'm supposed to watch over you."

"Come on, I'm in an Ivy League computer center. What could threaten me here? And if you'll give me sufficient cab fare, I promise to go straight to our hotel afterward."

Joan pondered that. "Okay." She rummaged in her purse, and ended by giving Luke twenty dollars and a sisterly kiss. "Remember your promise."

Harvey came back a minute later. Luke made excuses for Joan's disappearance, and urged him to keep talking about his formula for reducing ten dimensions.

Grace had once told Luke about how the rebel philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau had recorded an embarrassing but amusing event in his diary. During an argument with his girlfriend, he had made a rude comment about her figure. She had retorted that if he was that interested in figures, he should give up women and take up geometry.

Now, two centuries later, Luke was temporarily trying to follow the same advice.


	6. The Kindness of Strangers

**Winter Journeys**

**Chapter 6 The Kindness of Strangers**

_(AUTHOR'S NOTE: The main incident of this chapter was borrowed from Isaac Asimov's mystery story "THE GOOD SAMARITAN", though the effect on the plot will be quite different. I don't have any right to quote that story, either, so this is purely for fun and no profit.)_

After getting out of the cab at Old North Church, in a very old section of Boston, Joan first searched around the church for clues. She had heard that there was a very popular novel out whose main characters did that a lot. On failing to find anything, she mentally took a step back. Maybe God intended this as an educational experience. She looked through two tourist brochures at the entrance, one of which focussed on architecture and the other held an old poem called "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere", which was partly set at the church. She actually liked the poem, but still could not discern a mission here.

She could find no cabs when she was done, but that did not bother her at first: this neighborhood seemed small, and she was used to walking a lot in Arcadia. But after trying to trace back the cab's route through the winding streets, she realized that she was lost.

Spotting a street sign, she got her map out of her purse. But it was a tourists' map, one that highlighted important sites and did not bother to label each street. She was somewhere in what the map called theNorth End. As she shoved the map back in her purse, her eye fell on her cell phone. Call 911? As a policeman's daughter, she didn't want to burden the local police with an apparently minor problem. Call Luke? He could do nothing himself, but his college friend would know his way around the city and might be able to pick up Joan. But she'd never hear the end of it from Luke: Big Sister appoints herself his escort but gets lost in her first day around the city. Better if she solved the problem herself.

"Are you lost, miss?"

She whirled around and found herself facing a swarthy, bearded young man. Alarm bells went off in her mind: her mother, a former victim of rape, had drummed all sorts of precautions into her, with additional advice from her cop father. Admit that she was lost, and the other would immediately realize that she was vulnerable and had no refuge if he tried to take advantage of her.

"No -- I'm all right," stated Joan firmly, and started off resolutely in a random direction.

Two blocks later she stopped. Fear and exertion had caused her to sweat, which was not pleasant when stuck outdoors in December. She was about to give in and call Luke when she spotted a familiar face: another bearded man, but who looked like Dog-Walker God. Maybe He saw her predicament and had come to the rescue.

"Hey!" she said, walking up. "Can you help me?"

The man turned, and Joan's heart sank. Now that she saw his face clearly, he was clearly not Dog-Walker God -- and what's more, the once-over look he gave her was not in the least spiritual. "Yeah, gal. Come with me." He sounded drunk.

"Um, where?" Joan asked, considering going the opposite direction.

"My flat. I can get you warmed up. Real warm."

Eewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. He probably thought she was a homeless girl desperate to do anything to get out of the cold outdoors. You couldn't guess a girl's economic status from her jeans.

"Uh, I don't think so."

The dirty old man walked toward. "Think again."

Suddenly a form appeared from Joan's left and knocked the predator off his feet. Uttering a single monosyllable -- "Come!" -- it seized her sleeve and pulled her along. Joan allowed this to go for a couple of blocks, then saw a welcome sight: one of Boston's rivers, with a highway running along it.

Her rescuer released her sleeve and pointed down the highway. It was the first, younger, bearded man. "There's a hotel down at edge of the neighborhood. I'd advice you to catch a cab direct to your home or accommodation."

"Great advice. Were you following me?"

"Yes. I saw that you were in trouble, but feared to trust me." He had a thick accent and a pedantic way of speaking English, as if he had learnt it recently.

Joan felt stupid. She had mistaken a rescuer as a threat, and a threat as a rescuer. "I'm sorry I mistrusted you. I'm Joan Girardi." She offered her hand to shake.

He backed up and bowed. Maybe, now that the emergency was over, he had cultural rules about not touching a woman. "I am Ali Musa. May Allah go with you."

So he was Muslim. Joan searched her memory for the greeting Professor Begh had taught her_Salaam-Alaikum._"

Looking pleased at being addressed in Arabic, Musa bowed again and walked back into his neighborhood.

Allah go with you. It was a standard farewell, but it triggered worrisome thoughts in Joan's mind. God was supposed to be with her, but today he had not been. Yet the main reason she had gotten lost was that God had encouraged her to go to Old North Church. Certainly he must have foreknown the complications that might ensue -- to put it bluntly, that she might screw up.

Why had God sent her into danger?


	7. Bonnie's Arrival

**Winter Journeys**

**Chapter 7 Bonnie's arrival**

As Grace rode back from her "garden" the final time that Sunday, she saw a big-bellied woman standing on the Cavalo's back porch, and knew that Bonnie had arrived. As she rode into the big back yard, Bonnie waddled down the stairs. "That looks like fun."

"Fun?" echoed Grace crossly. She was cold and tired, and her legs ached from their unaccustomed position spread out on the horse. It all came with the job, but she didn't need Bonnie treating the whole thing as a vacation.

"Riding your horse. Could you teach me?"

Grace dismounted. "No way. Number one, I don't have experience teaching; number two, you might fall off, and I can't risk the consequences in your condition. Number three, you're not even supposed to ride for a long time in a _car_ without taking breaks to walk; riding astride would seem to be counter- indicated. Even I can tell that." Grace vividly reminded a painful incident last summer, when an awkward position on her horse had caused a certain delicate membrane to snap. Diana had soothed her pain and assured her that it was not an uncommon accident for girls riding horses astride. That wasn't exactly Bonnie's problem, but-

Hadn't Bonnie been at Maggie Begh's equestrian party, back in September when it was safer? Yes, but she hadn't gotten on top of a horse then. She had used the occasion to announce her pregnancy to the girls of the school.

Grace led her horse toward the stable. Bonnie followed. "You can just let me get on board and lead me around the yard."

"Giving pony rides is not part of my job description." Grace entered the stable and looked for an empty stall. The pregnant girl followed her in for a second, then apparently got a whiff of manure and exited hastily, her hand over her mouth to keep from throwing up. Grace scowled happily. Horse dung actually came in useful on occasion.

Grace showered off in the house, with lots of hot water, and felt warm and refreshed. Returning to her room, she found Bonnie stretched out on the bed reading a magazine, her luggage still sitting in the floor. Even her swollen stomach irritated Grace, as if Bonnie was trying to maximize the space that she was taking over.

"Look," Grace commanded. "_This _side of the room is for my stuff, and _that_ side of the room is for your stuff, and never the twain shall meet. Later we may flip a coin for the bed."

Bonnie stared at Grace, but instead of replying directly she went straight to the point. "Why do you hate me so much? We hardly know each other."

"You really want to know? OK. I've basically got two best friends in the world, Rove and Girardi. Last spring, you screwed Rove. When Girardi found out, she went ballistic, and I was stuck in the middle. I could've lost one or both of my friends, and it would have been your fault, bitch. If you can cause me that much trouble without knowing me, I really don't want to make your acquaintance."

The two glared at each other for a moment, to be finally interrupted by Jean Cavalo calling out from downstairs: "Suppertime!"

Grace spun around and marched downstairs, with Bonnie following in her wake.

There was a Christmas carol playing on the radio. As Grace walked in, Jonathan Cavalo reached to turn it off, but Grace held up her hand. "It's all right. Christmas music doesn't bother me." She had spent much of last winter's holiday with the Girardis. Helen, in reaction to the tragedy of Judith's death and under the influence of her Catholic friend Lily, had developed a nostalgic love for Christmas carols and everybody else had either shared or indulged it.

"Well, thank you, Grace. We ought to help you celebrate your holiday as well. There's a special candelabra, right?"

Grace took a seat. Bonnie, rather predictably, took a seat at the opposite end of the table, as far from Grace as she could.

"A menorah. With space for nine candles, eight plus a special one. The idea is to light one candle each day for the week of Hannukah."

"What's the symbolism behind that?" asked Brian Cavalo.

"The story was that some Jews had lost and regained the Temple during a war, and they wanted to rededicate it, which included tending a sacred fire. They were very low on oil, which was the main fuel at the time, but God miraculously multiplied the fuel so that they could keep their fire going for a week and a day. We light eight candles in memory of the miracle."

"Cool," said Bonnie. "I wish God would look after me like that."

Grace looked across the table in surprise at Bonnie's wistful tone. Dumped by her lover, kicked out by her parents, knowing she could not keep her child at birth, shuttling back in forth between various protectors at a time her hormones were encouraging her to "nest". Bonnie must feel terribly alone in the world.

And wasn't it a weird coincidence that she had uttered her wish for God, only a few feet away from one of God's errand girls?


	8. Grace's World

**Winter Journeys**

**Chapter 8 Grace's World**

_(Author's Note: the title is a play on "Christina's World", the famousAndrew Wyeth painting of a girl in a wheat field. Basically this chapter is a portrait of Grace)_

The next day was Monday, when the week was planned out. Over lunch, Grace volunteered to take care of the special wheat field during afternoons, and the family agreed to that.

Why would a twenty-first century city girl want to take over a cold, monotonous task? Grace herself wondered about that, and tried to examine her motivations. She didn't want people to talk about "crazy Grace" the way they talked about "crazy Joan". (They already talked about "weird Grace", but that was nothing new)

First of all was her loner personality. The few people that she really cared about were hundreds of miles away, and the principal one wasn't even on speaking terms with her. The less time that she spent with Bonnie, the better. The Cavalos were nice people, but for that very reason she had to hold her tongue with them, not bringing up certain subjects or uttering certain words with four letters. She didn't exactly agree with the irritable French philosopher who had declared that "Hell is other people", but she felt freer when she was alone.

Second was the matter of accomplishment. She liked to think that she accomplished something by speaking out on important issues, but the fact of the matter was that even her best friends, Adam and Joan, tended to tune her out rather than being inspired to change their lives. A year ago she had denounced dating as being so retro; they had nodded solemnly and then gone on a date. Here was something that she could DO. If the project worked, it could save lives in the Third World, and Grace could take pride in that. Of course some scientists had fiddled with the genes, and the Cavalos had donated the land, but it was Grace who had done the physical work.

Then there was the Secret Garden mystique. Emulating Mary-Quite-Contrary meant that Grace could think back to her childhood. Most people got nostalgic about their childhood innocence; Grace was more so, because her rite-of-passage had been learning that her mother was an alcoholic and her father in denial, at the least.

And in the mystical sense, she could regard this square of land as her own little world. A world that didn't contain dorks that had fun with your body in bed and then made excuses not to see you afterward.

Grace was enjoying her privacy so much that she was annoyed when she heard the clip-clop of horses' hooves. Her own was grazing in a neighboring field, one which would not be heavily planted until spring. Looking in the direction of the sound, she saw Bonnie and Brian Cavalo in a wagon, pulled by a powerful draft horse.

"Hi," said Brian, hopping down from the wagon. "I told my parents I'd help gather up the discarded wheat and take it back to the farmhouse."

"All right. I've left it in a few piles in the path." She started on a pile several dozen yards away from the wagon. As she expected, Brian followed suit. Grace lowered her voice. "So Bonnie isn't working?"

"Mom said she shouldn't and bend and lift things in her condition."

"Yeah, I figured that. So she's just going to sit on her ass and watch?"

Brian looked surprised. Maybe he wasn't used to girls using coarse language about other girls; she wondered what sort of high school he attended. "She's been helping Mom with chores all day. Look, Grace, if you're tired, why don't you sit in the wagon and let me finish with this? You've obviously been working hard all day."

Brian had misunderstood the reason for Grace's bad mood -- Grace was ALWAYS in a bad mood -- but she agreed and walked back to the wagon reluctantly.

"I think Brian's hot for you," whispered Bonnie.

"Too bad."

"Why too bad? I mean, I wouldn't want a guy stalking me, but Brian isn't that type. what's wrong with being admired?"

"It bothers me when I can't reciprocate."

Bonnie looked puzzled, and at first Grace thought "reciprocate" wasn't in her vocabulary. Then Bonnie asked, "Are you gay?"

"What?"

"I've heard rumors at school."

Two years ago Grace had enjoyed encouraging those rumors. But then she had fallen for Luke and the whole game seemed silly. "No, there's this guy. He--"

She was trying to decide how much to reveal when Brian announced, "I've loaded the wagon now. If you'll collect your horse, Grace, we can head home."

Grace approached her horse, who backed up a few steps and then turned tail and ran. She heard Bonnie laugh from the wagon. "Don't think your horse likes you, Grace."

_Yeah, like most members of the animal kingdom, including humans_, thought Grace, turning red. She hated being humiliated in front of Bonnie.

"It's used to me, I'll fetch it," said Brian. He went after the horse, did some sort of "horse whisperer" trick, and led it back to Grace. She thanked him, pulled herself up into the saddle, and urged it into a gallop toward the farmhouse, leaving Bonnie and Brian behind. It proved that she was a competent horsewoman after all, and gave her a couple of more minutes of privacy.

----------

That evening, Jean Cavalo took Bonnie aside for a long talk, and Grace had the room for herself for a time. She booted up her computer and noticed that she had an Email from Adam.

_Grace:_

_Jane told me the most wonderful secret Saturday, about why she works on so many projects. She says that you're in it, too. Is that true?_

He did not describe the secret itself; Joan and her friends had learnt long ago not to talk about it explicitly online. Suppose Bonnie got nosy and read their Email? Grace clicked REPLY and typed an indirect message of her own.

_So which of Joan's friends did you meet? The cute boy? The old lady? The little girl? Someone else?_

Suitably cryptic to an outside observer, but any of Joan's confidantes would know what she meant.

Bonnie walked in, and Grace hastily shut down the Email program. Bonnie didn't seem to notice. She looked like she was about to cry. "What's wrong?" inquired Grace nastily.

"I've been talking to Mrs. Cavalo. She said that she had a difficult time when she was pregnant, and when Brian was born they advised her not to try again. That's why she was anxious to take me under her wing; she wanted to tell me the danger signs. Fortunately I seem to be OK."

"I see."

"Poor lady. She said that she and her husband wanted a lot of kids originally. They didn't get their wish. Meanwhile my Mom hated kids so much that she gave me a choice: get an abortion or get out. She was convinced that once I had the baby, I'd dump it on her. I got out."

"You wanted your baby that much?" This part of the story was new to Grace.

"Nah. I'm going to give it up after it comes out. I just thought it deserved a chance at life."

So she gave up her home to save a baby she didn't even want. Took a moral stand and suffered as a result -- something Grace had never had to do, for all her dreams of fighting authority. Grace was impressed.

God had not spoken to her since the breakup with the Girardis. Maybe Joan was always supposed to be the link to God, and Grace had broken the circuit. But here, even without a mysterious stranger, was a situation that cried out for intervention.

Grace sighed. It sucked having to answer to God. It meant she couldn't ignore the situation like she wanted. So much for being alone.

TBC

_(Author's Note: I will be going on vacation in a few days and be out of touch with the Internet for a while, so there will be some time before my next update. But the whole story is in my head, and I will not abandon it. Once again, thanks to LostSchizophrenic for beta-ing.)_


	9. The Bookstore Business

**Winter Journeys**

**Chapter 9**

**The Bookstore Business**

Joan had at first decided not to tell Luke or anybody else about getting lost. When they regrouped at the hotel, she described Old North Church and the surrounding neighborhood as if she had been exploring North End Boston on purpose. Luke hadn't paid much attention anyway; he was all wound up in what he called the 10D problem.

That night, however, Joan had an unpleasant nightmare. She was in North End Boston again, but this time she had somehow forgotten to put her clothes on before leaving the hotel. Bearded men were following her, and she couldn't run away fast enough. Adam appeared, but instead of rescuing her he started sketching her body "to remember you by, since you're away so often." When he showed it to her, the picture of her nude body somehow merged into the brief glimpse she had gotten of Grace's nakedness, back on the night she found the sleeping lovers. She awoke in a sweat.

Once the sheer nightmare feeling went away -- washing her face in cold water helped -- she could make sense of the dream. It was a bundle of anxieties, mixing up her concern of how far to go with Adam, plus terror of repeating her mother's fate, plus her recent adventure and mystery.

What finally broke her resolve was Luke's unusual display of feelings the next morning. They were eating breakfast in the hotel restaurant, in a corner where they had privacy. "I wish Grace were here."

"Is that all that you men ever think about?"

"I'm not talking about sex, Joan. I'd be delighted if she'd just kiss me. Or say she understands me. For that matter, I'd be relieved just to hear her call me a stupid dork."

"You've got your cell phone, and her number, don't you? You could call her up at any time and she'd at least call you a stupid dork."

"No. I've got to win the Polonski's respect, by refraining."

"Do you think that's possible? Once a girl's lost her virginity, it's LOST. You can't unsleep with their daughter."

"No. But it must be a soluble problem."

"Well, if you can't figure that out, I got another soiled problem that may take your mind off that one." She frankly described her previous day's incident to Luke, and voiced her deepest concern. "Why would you-know-who put me in danger?"

"Has he ever put you in danger before?" asked Luke.

It was a rhetorical question to which they both knew the answer. "Yeah. Getting stuck in a junkyard with a crazy Ramsey and a gun. But I survived without a scratch, and I suppose our friend foreknew that and thought it was worth it. The important thing was changing Ramsey's actions."

"So there must have been an important thing yesterday."

"I don't know what it is. I looked for clues. Nobody asked me for help."

"What about the guy that helped you out, Ali something?"

"Ali Musa. He didn't seem to have a problem. I was the one with the problem."

"Why would he pour out his problems to a lost girl? Maybe you're supposed to get to know him better."

"Oh, great. A metropolis of millions of people, and he's probably too new even to be in the phone book. Am I supposed to go to North End Boston and look for him, without getting lost again myself? I've already got a mission today, seeing the people who own our bookstore."

"Calm down, Joan, and think it through. We may not have to look for an individual; we can look for a group. What's the one organization a new Moslem immigrant is likely to be a part of?"

"Of course. A mosque!"

"And nowadays even a mosque will probably advertise on the web. We can do a web search tonight. Meanwhile, you can concentrate on the bookstore."

_And hopefully Luke will spend the day not thinking about Grace._

_-----------_

Redding and Associates had an office in a skyscraper, just one block from a subway station. Little danger of getting lost there. Joan decided to visit the office by herself and let Luke visit "Harvey" at his college. She had stopped even pretending to be Luke's chaperone.

Wearing a dress to look professional, and trying to be poised and adult-like, Joan strode into the office. "My name is Joan Girardi, and I work for your bookstore in Arcadia, Maryland. I need to talk to somebody."

"Which somebody did you have in mind?" asked the receptionist.

Joan hadn't studied the hierarchy in advance. "Um, sales manager?"

"I don't suppose you have an appointment?"

"Uh, no."

The receptionist seemed amused by Joan's awkwardness, but not particularly unfriendly. "I'll see what I can do." She got up from her desk and disappeared into the back rooms. As she did so, Joan noticed that she was wearing jeans, and probably considered Joan's skirt as hopelessly retro. Three faux pas already and she hadn't even gotten beyond the waiting room.

The receptionist came back. "Mr. Logan will see you."

Joan followed the woman into the back rooms. They weren't as dazzling as the waiting room, and that first room was probably decorated for show. The receptionist showed Joan into a corner office. An African-American man, maybe about thirty, stood up. "Pleased to meet you, Ms. Girardi. I'm Milton Logan, in charge of sales. What can I do for you?"

Joan sat down on the chair offered. "I've heard that it's possible my branch may be closed. I wanted to find out if it's true."

Mr. Logan frowned. "You know, a lot of managers would deny things, afraid that employees would bail out or sabotage their place of work. But you've come all the way here from Maryland, and deserve an honest answer. It doesn't look good."

"Oh." said Joan, trying to look philosophical. There must be something she could do here, or God wouldn't have sent her. She had to keep her cool.

"It's not YOU, it's the bookstore business. It's hard to compete with the Internet these days. If a reader can order a book with a few clicks at home, why bother driving to a store with a limited selection, which may need even have what he's looking for? It's not like when I entered the business." An emotional tone entered his speech. "I grew up in a tough neighborhood, and getting a job in a small bookstore changed my life. No bullies would bother me there, and I found myself in touch with a vast world beyond the dismal local streets. But where was I? Oh, yes."

"Savvy bookstore managers realize the competition problem," Mr. Logan went on, "and they try to introduce personal touches that the Internet can't provide. A reading room, perhaps even with refreshments. An autograph session with a favorite author. We provide funding for that, but it's up to the individual manager to take the initiative. And it looks like your boss never did."

Right. The first Sammy had been preoccupied by his sick wife. The second Sammy just wanted to sit at home and wait for the profits to roll in, which they didn't. "So my store is doomed?"

"We'll be making our decisions at year end; in other words, in about three weeks. If your boss can convince us that he can turn things around, fine. Otherwise--"

"I'm fired?"

"Not that bad. You have a good record, and we would like to keep you on, but it may be in a different capacity. If you can't beat the Internet, join it. We'll move the books to a warehouse, and notify the Internet sellers that we can fill orders. We can give you a position there. But you seem to be a "people" person, and it doesn't sound like this job is one you'd like."

"No. Well, thanks for leveling with me, Mr. Logan."

"I'm sorry I couldn't do more. If your boss gets an idea, call me and I'll expedite things on this end."

"Yeah, right."

Outside the offices, Joan found a ladies' room, where she could hide for a few minutes and cry. Once she got herself under control, she got out her cell phone and called her own bookstore, hoping Sammy was there.

Sammy was surprised that she had actually taken his advice and visited Redding and Associates. She described the talk with Mr. Logan, and he started moaning: "We're doomed, we're doomed."

That reaction gave Joan an odd sense of déjà vu, which she finally resolved: Glynis had uttered those words, when she realized that her grand future career might be derailed by an unexpected pregnancy. But it hadn't been; Joan had talked Friedmann into being a man, marrying and supporting her. "We're not doomed, Sammy. Mr. Logan gave you a month to convince him that the store can still succeed. Think, Sammy, think!"

---------------  
That evening, Luke was quite happy over how his tour of Harvard had gone, and willing to help Joan with some of her own problems.

"There. The Web says that there are two mosques in the North End. If one doesn't work out, we'll try the other."

"We?"

"I'm going with you."

"Because Big Sister is too stupid to go there with out getting lost again?"

"No, for protection. Remember mother --"

Joan shuddered. "Right." And when she considered how unpromising Luke might be in a fight, she shuddered again.

-----------------

As they approached the first mosque -- actually a converted building painted with Islamic symbols -- Joan felt more confident. Professor Begh had told her about Muslim customs. "Don't go wandering around the mosque, because it's officially off-limits to unbelievers -- that's us. If you do touch sacred ground, you're supposed to take your shoes off." She herself was wearing yesterday's long dress, with a high-neckline blouse.

"As long as I get them back," said Luke.

"Huh?"

"I want to an anarchist meeting once to look for Grace, and -- oh, never mind."

She found a couple of old, bearded men in front, who looked down on the American girl invading their sacred territory. "Yes?"

"I'm looking for a guy named Ali Musa."''

"Why?"

"He helped me out Sunday when I was lost. In gratitude, I wanted to give him a gift." She displayed the wrapped present. It was a subtle touch: simply rewarding him would seem mercenary, but an exchange of gifts sounded generous.

And indeed, the Muslim seemed less on the defensive, though the next statement was a shock. "Ali Musa is not here. He has been arrested."

"Arrested. Why?"

"They think he is a terrorist."

Joan's benefactor mistaken for a terrorist? Something was very wrong, and Joan finally knew what her mission was.


	10. Fulfillment of a Prophecy

**Winter Journeys**

**Fulfillment of a Prophecy**

_(Author's Note: "Ross Highway" is a little in-joke. My grandfather was an early highway commissioner in North Carolina and his name was Ross, but to my knowledge he never named anything after himself)_

Grace and Bonnie eventually learned to live in one room -- not by negotiation, but mainly by muddling through. Bonnie claimed that she could not sleep on the floor in her condition, and Grace, not knowing enough about pregnancy to argue the matter, let her have the bed every night. On the other hand, Bonnie developed a sentimental interest in listening to Christmas carols or watching TV with the Cavalos family, giving Grace time alone in their room for a couple of hours each evening.

Bonnie had in the meantime found ways to make herself useful. Mrs. Cavalos had taught her how to "drive" the horse-drawn wagon, which meant that she could help transport heavy goods around the farm, even though she was forbidden to lift the goods herself. She had also learnt to hitch and unhitch the draft horse to the wagon, something that required no bending, though the Cavalos insisted that she call them in if the beast showed any resistance.

Mrs. Cavalos, discovering that Bonnie had not yet made contact with an adoption agency, found one with branches in both North Carolina and Maryland, meaning that Bonnie could start negotiations here and complete them even if she moved back to Arcadia. The agency's first visit was scheduled for Friday, December 16, in the afternoon. The Cavalos parents had to go shopping in the nearby town that morning, but promised that they would be back in time.

Grace, meanwhile worked in her Secret Garden, at tasks that had became so routine she rarely had to think about them. But today something grabbed her attention. Normally the stalks had a fairly uniform yellow color, but along one of today's plants she noticed patches of brown that she had never seen before. Then the same flaws on another plant.

She got out her pruning knife, cut one of the odd stalks, and put it down on the path separate from the others. Later, when it was time to ride home for lunch, she cut it into pieces small enough to fit in her saddlebag. She'd see what the Cavalos made of it.

The backyard seemed strangely empty when Grace rode into it. The family car was gone, meaning that Cavalos couple had not gotten back yet. But the wagon was also gone. Even if Bonnie or Brian had taken it out for chores, she should have spotted something that big at a distance somewhere on the farm.

Dismounting, and trudging in the back door, she called out "Hello? Anybody here?"

"Grace?" she heard Brian's voice from upstairs. "I've just gotten out of the shower. I've been mucking out the stable this morning."

"It's OK," relieved at hearing a human voice. Then she saw the note on the kitchen table. She read it through once, then yelled, "BRIAN! We've got TROUBLE!"

He dashed in, dressed in trousers and bathrobe and bare feet. She handed him the note.

_I cant go thru with it. I thought that I could just give the baby up and that's that but I was stupid. Ive seen now what a real fambly is like now and I want a fambly like that for my own. I already got a fambly inside me and Im not going to give it up. Im not going to let the adoption people take my baby I won't be here. Sorry about taking the horse and wagon but Ill get them back somehow. Goodby._

BONNIE

"But that doesn't make sense," Brian said. "She hasn't committed herself to anything. Why would she run away when she could just say no to the adoption agency?"

"We're talking about BONNIE," Grace said, "a girl who's gotten in and out of scrapes for all her teen life. If you're Bonnie, you don't say no to authority, you run."

"Or ride away in our wagon," said Brian angrily. "We've got to get her back."

"Right. The question is, where did she go?"

"There's an abandoned farmhouse about a mile west of us," mused Brian. "Maybe she's hiding there."

"Maybe, if hiding out is all she has in mind. But if she's trying to get out of the area altogether, she'd head for town. That's east."

"Maybe we should call the police."

"With your parents' horse and wagon in her possession? We don't want her to get on record as a thief, on top of everything else." Grace looked out of the window, taking stock of the remaining vehicles. No wagon, and the Cavalos still had their car. "I'll get on my horse and ride east along the road. Even with her head start, I should be able to catch up with a plodding draft horse and a heavy wagon. I'll keep my cell phone with me."

"I'll call my parents, and get dressed, and ride to the old farmhouse, then," said Brian. "East or west, we ought to find her."

Outside, Grace swung herself back into the saddle and rode down the driveway to the road. She knew that trotting on modern asphalt roads were not good for horses' hooves, and that galloping was even worse, but speed was necessary, and she urged her mount to race down the road as fast as it could. At least climate was on her side: though cold, temperatures were above freezing, and she wouldn't have to worry about icy patches. Once she settled into a steady gait, she felt a sudden fit of déjà vu.

_She had been in Arcadia's city park last August, a couple of weeks after returning from vacation, when a young woman rode up on horseback._

_"Hey!" yelled Grace. "Stay on the bridle path! People should be able to walk around the park without worrying about stepping in horse crap."_

_"I'm in control, Grace," the equestrienne said calmly. It was Diana, the Cowgirl God. "But I have something to say. I gave you riding lessons for a reason, and you need to keep your skills up. Someday they'll save somebody's life."_

_"A life in danger? Whose? When?" asked Grace. But Diana turned her horse's head around, gave a backhanded wave, and rode away like the wind. Grace wondered if Diana's mount was a supernatural creation or even part of the avatar. But that wasn't important. The prophecy was._

Grace had obeyed the hint. It was made easier by the fact that she made a new friend, Maggie Begh, whose family raised horses and let Grace visit their stables whenever she liked. Grace figured that that wasn't a coincidence.

But instinct told her that today was not just a matter of a runaway girl. It was today that her riding skills would save a life.

There, up ahead, a bundle lying in the thick grass on the side of the road. Grace reined in to examine it.

It was Bonnie, unconscious. Her arm was lying at an odd angle, and Grace hated even to speculate what other injuries were concealed by her thick winter clothes. Grace fished out her cell phone without even dismounting, and punched 911.

"Hello? My name's Grace Polk. There's a pregnant woman lying unconscious at the side of a road. Seven months. I'm not sure what all has happened to her. Please send help!"

"What is your location?"

"Um, about a mile east of 7733 Ross Highway." The Cavalos address. "Tell them to look for a girl and a black horse standing at the side of the road."

"We'll dispatch somebody. Do not try to move the victim, but keep her warm."

"OK. Hurry."

Grace dismounted and examined the scene to figure out what happened. Bonnie was lying on a thick patch of overgrown grass. Behind Grace, back toward the farmhouse, the grass had been crushed for several feet. So: Bonnie had jumped or fallen from a rapidly moving wagon, and rolled to a stop. From what Grace remembered from AP Physics, that was a lot less harmful than simply hitting the ground with a single thud. But with her belly sticking out and presenting such a vulnerable target--?

Grace took off her coat and draped it over Bonnie's body to keep it warm. Shivering in the December weather, she hugged her horse's neck, trying to absorb warmth from the animal's own body heat. At the same time, and it took some complicated logistics, she punched in Brian's number on her cell phone and told him what she had found. He promised to call his parents with the news.

To Grace in her current mood, the ambulance took a shocking amount of time coming, but she reminded herself that she was miles from the nearest town, not within walking distance of the hospital as in Arcadia. When they did arrive, they seemed impressively efficient. Without asking stupid questions, they gave Bonnie a quick examination, transferred her to a stretcher without jarring her, and loaded her in the back of the ambulance. Then one of the paramedics turned to Grace. "Do you know the victim?"

"Sort of. Her name's Bonnie McLean."

"You better come with us to sign papers."

"OK." Grace stared at her horse, wondering how to get rid of it, then fell back on a trick she had seen in movies. Leading it around by the reins until it was facing the farm, she then gave a sharp slap on the rump. The frightened horse galloped away, putting as much distance between itself and Grace as possible. Her theory was that once it slowed down, it would recognize the surroundings and trot the rest of the way home. If not, the Cavalos were out two horses and a wagon on top of having a badly injured guest. A poor result for their generosity. What had God let this happen to such a deserving couple?

And those losses were minor compared to what Bonnie could lose.


	11. Blessed Event

**Winter Journeys**

**Blessed Event**

Grace got in the passenger seat of the ambulance, twisting around to see what was going on. The paramedics were busy working on Bonnie in back. Either their aid, or the warmth of the vehicle, seemed to revive her.

"Stop! Stop! Whoa, horsie! Stop!"

"It's all right, Bonnie. You're safe now," reassured Grace, though "safety" was relative. "What happened?"

"Ummmm -- car zoomed by, spooked horse. Started racing. Decided to jump."

Grace winced. "Didn't you realize that you could hurt the baby?"

"Danger anyway. Tried sticking arms out."

"That matches the evidence," said one of the paramedics. "One of her arms is badly broken, the other sprained, but that's the worst of the damage. The arms broke the fall, protecting her belly."

"And she rolled to a stop, using up momentum gradually. I figured out that part," said Grace. Whatever flaws Bonnie might have, she did have an instinct for self-preservation. "Can you check on the baby?"

"Too much action in that region," answered the other paramedic. "I think the shock has triggered labor."

"Oh, God," moaned Grace, sinking back in her seat in despair. The exclamation was reflexive at first, but it triggered other thoughts, as Grace remembered that she was in a nearly unique position.

She knew that God did not protect his favorites from tragedy. He had let Joan lose Judith, and made no miracles to help Kevin, all on the ground that they had "made their choices". But maybe Joan had not fought hard enough. She was not a born rebel like Grace.

_I know You can hear me thinking, God, so Now Hear This. If Bonnie dies or loses the baby, we're through. I'm not going to make war like Ryan Hunter, but I'm not going to play Errand Girl either. Yeah, I know Bonnie made her choices, and stupid ones, but I don't care. I'm exerting my free will, and You have my conditions. Now it's Your choice._

_Amen._

_--------------_

At the hospital the staff took over and wheeled Bonnie into the emergency room. They asked Grace to stay behind in the waiting room and fill out forms. Ordinarily red tape drove Grace up the wall, but at the moment it exerted a calming effect on her, enabling her to focus on something besides a crisis in which she could do little.

NAME: Bonnie McLean

ADDRESS: That was complicated. Grace settled for putting in the Cavalos' address, 7733 Ross Highway.

PARTY RESPONSIBLE FOR PAYMENT: That was even more complicated. The jerk whot had knocked Bonnie up had been shamed into providing enough money to cover her expenses for nine months, but nobody had anticipated the current emergency. Grace grimly wrote in the name of Bonnie's mother, who had kicked her out. It would serve the bitch right if she got soaked with her daughter's medical bill.

The Cavalo couple showed up in the waiting room. They had left Brian to run the farm: no matter what the nature of the emergency, somebody had to keep the farm animals fed. They told Grace that they had found the runaway horse with its wagonon the road, where it had finally run out of energy. They had tethered it to a tree, and Brian would retrieve them later. Her own horse had also been found, though Grace would be reluctant to get on it soon, after that slap on the rump. So everything was accounted for and all right, except for Bonnie.

At one point a nurse stuck her head out to give them an update. Bonnie's arm injuries had been treated, and the focus was now on her womb. The paramedics were right, and Bonnie was in labor. Thedoctors thought it unwise to try to stop it, and so Bonnie was going to have her baby, two months early.

"Have!" repeated Jean Cavalo after the nurse went back to the operating room. "Such a weird verb for the process. It was the most painful, exhilarating experience of my life when I gave birth to Brian, and they call it "having a baby". Like having a cup of coffee. In older times they used to call it "bearing a child". At least that gave you an idea of the work involved."

"Patriarchy," explained Grace. "When all a man had to do was enjoy himself for a night, and pace for a few hours nine months later, it was easy for men to talk about having."

"I didn't pace," said Jonathan. "I was with Jean all the way through."

They were all talking as if this was a normal birth. Not the culmination of a wild seven months.

Eventually the nurse came out again. "It's over! We had to rush the child to the incubator, but that's normal for a two-month premature infant. It's a boy. And the mother is doing well, under the circumstances."

The Cavalos made sighs of relief. Grace had a more profound reaction.

_Did God hear me and fix the situation? Or was it pre-ordained to come out right, starting with Bonnie's lucky fall? I'll probably never know. But I got what I asked for, and I'm back to playing Errand Girl._

---------------------

A few hours later, late in the evening, Grace and the Cavalos visited Bonnie. The girl was pale and her arms were both in a complicated sling, but she had come through. For the first time, Grace looked upon the little pest with awe. She had survived months of misfortune and ended accomplishing something Grace had never done: bringing new life into the world.

"Hello?" said a voice from the hallway. "Is this Bonnie Mclean's room? I'm Cecilia Doone, from Ace Adoptions. I visited the address--"

Grace practically pushed the woman back into the corridor. "You can't come in! Bonnie has just had -- borne -- a baby and she's exhausted. Come back later."

"But that's just the point. The longer we wait, the harder it is for the mother to part with the child. At this stage, she may not have bonded with it yet."

Grace frowned, realizing that it sounded logical. She let the woman in. The Cavalos looked shocked, but seemed to acknowledge, like Grace, that this was something that needed thrashing out now.

"I'm not giving it up," said Bonnie. "It's my baby. I saved its life today, before it was even born."

Grace walked up to her, reluctantly taking the side of cold logic. "That's your hormones talking, Bonnie. Just a few days ago you told me you were willing to give up the child."

"That was then. This is now. I've seen what a real mother is like, now, in HER," Bonnie said, nodding toward Mrs. Cavalo.

"But then made more sense. You're just 17, Bonnie, not a farmer's wife. You need to plan for your future. You need to finish high school at the least. That jerk's money is going to run out soon; what will you do after that? I know that your mother is a bitch, but at least she'll probably take you back once the baby isn't a problem. And you can trust the adoption agency to find a good home for the baby." Was this her real role in this mess? Talking Bonnie out of making a mistake? "Let it go."

"I can't! I can't turn him over and know I'll never see him again! If you let me visit once a while--"

"I'm sorry, the rules forbid contact between the families," said Doone. Grace was about to slug her, for being so hard-assed and trapping Bonnie in an unpalatable choice, when--

"We'll raise the child," blurted out Jean Cavalo.

Everybody stared at her for a few moments. Jonathan recovered first, and nodded slowly. "We always wanted another child after Brian, but Fate, or God, or whatever, had other ideas."

"It looks like He changed his mind," observed Grace. And only she knew that it might be literally true, or that He had a plan for the Cavalos all along.

Jean walked up to Bonnie. "You'll be able to visit your child whenever you like, Bonnie, but Grace is right. You need to be free to get your own life in order first."

Bonnie pondered it for a nearly minute, while Grace held her breath. Finally-

"OK. I'll let the Cavalos adopt my baby."

"This isn't the sort of adoption my agency handles, as I said," replied Doone, "but I can put you in touch with the right people. By the way, does the child have a name yet?"

"That's up to Bonnie," said Jean Cavalo.

"Adam," said Bonnie.

"Adam?" repeated Jean in puzzlement. "But he wasn't the baby's father."

"No. And neither of them really loved me. But Adam was the one who cared."

TBC


	12. Confronting the Higherups

**Winter Journeys**

**Chapter 12**

**Confronting the Higher-ups**

_(Author's Note: I had some fun with the name of the bookstore accountant. "Cipher" means to calculate, but it can also mean a "Zero", somebody that is not worth anything._

_I don't want anything in this story to be interpreted as detrimental to Boston, a city I love. For plot purposes I needed a big city where somebody might fall through the cracks, and I chose Boston because of the college connection)_

"Almost finished the last page," Harvey announced from the laptop.

"Cool," Joan replied dully.

"I wish you'd show more enthusiasm," complained Luke. "After all, Harvey and I are writing the this bookstore program to save your butt."

"I would not put it so inelegantly," objected Harvey.

"No?"

"In England we would say 'her bum'."

"Get off my ass, you two," grumbled Joan. "The point is, I'm feeling doubly guilty. This bookstore program should be my work, not yours."

"You don't need to look at it that way," said Luke, more serious. "This was your idea; we're just doing the illustrations."

"Besides, I enjoyed this project," reassured Harvey. "It gives me the excuse to be flashy with the graphics. The 10D program is supposed to just sit in background, the less obtrusive the better."

"But you'll have to present the idea," Luke told his sister, "and that means getting familiar with what we've done. We should--"

RRRING

"Excuse me, that's my cell," said Joan. Taking it from her purse, she answered: "Hello?"

"Girardi? This is Polk."

"Grace!" shouted Joan; she saw Luke's head jerk up at the name. "Grace, it's wonderful to hear your voice after all this time. Do you want to talk to Luke?"

"That's his decision. I'm calling about news you need to know about. Last night, Bonnie gave birth to her baby, two months early -- I'm not gonna say 'had'."

"Not gonna say what?"

"Never mind. Your cousins agreed to raise the kid so Bonnie can get her life back together, so basically you have a new cousin."

It was weird, that a girl younger than herself had already become a parent. But no, Joan was NOT going to get jealous of an unwed mother. She tried to sound bland. "Is it a boy or girl? What's its name?"

"Um, Adam. You can guess the sex from--"

"ADAM. And it was born last night? Nine months ago, Bonnie and Adam--"

"No, Girardi, don't even go there. Bonnie's not fudging dates; all the medical people I've talked to said it's definitely a preemie. Bonnie named the kid for Adam because he was loyal enough to give her shelter, not because they were lovers once. What's the Robert Frost quote? 'Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in'. If I can trust that she's telling the truth, you should be able to, because I don't trust anybody."

Joan thought Grace was protesting too much; that Grace had been very impressed by the miracle of birth, even when the mother was Bonnie. "OK, it'll take getting used to. I'll tell L-, um, everybody the news."

She switched off the phone and gave Luke the bare bones of the news. Since Harvey was there, she left out the business between Bonnie and Adam, which Luke would know perfectly well.

Luke naturally had his own interest in the matter. "So how is Grace doing?"

"She didn't say. Sounded rather interested in the baby."

Harvey laughed, "When a girl friend is in that mood, best stay away from her for awhile. Might want one of her own." But a look at Luke's face seemed enough to tell him that Luke and Grace were no laughing matter, and he instantly changed the subject. "Why doubly guilty, Joan?"

"Huh?"

"You said you were feeling double guilty, and I reassured you about using our ideas. So what else are you guilty about?"

"A guy named Ali Musa. He's been in jail for nearly a week, and here I am worried about my career, like a yuppie."

While Luke explained to Harvey about Ali Musa, Joan thought back about her efforts this week--

Ali Musa did not have an American lawyer. Aside from the expense, the people within his Muslim neighborhood preferred to live according to **_Shariah, _**the traditional Muslim code. The American legal system had appointed him a representative. His Muslim friends (who became much less aloof once convinced that Joan was on Ali's side) gave her the lawyer's name and address.

The anteroom for the lawyer's office was less impressive than the one for Redding and Associates, and the receptionist much less friendly. Only after repeated assurance that she could help on a case was Joan let in.

"You say you have information on the Musa case?" asked the lawyer.

"Yeah. I know he's innocent."

"You know he's innocent. Great. If you could transfer that knowledge into the minds of the judge and jury, that would solve everything. Unfortunately, trials don't work that way. Listen to me, Miss Girardi. They may appoint me to represent a poor client, but they don't pay me much. Time is money, and you're taking up both by being here. So what can you do to help?"

"I'm willing to work on the case for free. And I've had AP Law."

"AP Law? Is that the high school version of Law 101?"

"Um, yeah." Both 'high school' and 'Law 101' sounded like insults.

"Well, here's something you probably don't learn in AP Law, Miss Girardi. It's called plea bargaining. In this case, Mr. Musa agrees to surrender his visa and leave the country, and the State drops the charges. Much simpler than trying to combat a terrorist charge against a Muslim when we're at war in Iraq."

"But he must have had a reason for coming to America."

"Maybe. All I can say is, he probably didn't come to sit in a jail cell. Tick-tock, Miss Girardi. Do you have anything to add to the case?"

"Not if you don't care about guilt and innocence," fumed Joan, storming out.

That was Tuesday. Thursday she had visited the police, trying to find out what the evidence was against Musa. She thought that she knew her way around police departments, having visited her father at work in both Arcadia and earlier towns. But on those occasions she had been tolerated as the kid of a high-ranking officer in the department. Here, nobody would give her the time of day. Besides, she knew from AP Law that the decision about pursuing the case lay with the Prosecuting Attorney, not the police. And why would the prosecutor talk to a girl who wanted to make trouble for his case?

"I can understand why you're upset, if you care about the case," Harvey consoled her after hearing Luke's account. "But as for guilt, there's plenty to go around. A defender that doesn't care. A general climate of suspicion against Muslims. Years of conflict on both sides that led to the suspicion. You have no reason to feel guilty, Joan."

She did, but she could not explain to Harvey, though Luke probably understood. She thought she understood ripples now. God had told her to study AP Law, then threw somebody in her path who needed legal help. Obviously she was intended to help him, but she had failed to do so. And in two days, she would be leaving Boston for home and be unable to help at all. Those two days would have to be devoted to salvaging her own job at the bookstore.

At the time of her appointment, the receptionist ushered Joan and Luke into a conference room. Joan introduced Luke as "my assistant", which seemed to impress the others. The others were Mr. Logan, who seemed friendly enough, and a Mr. Seifer, who looked skeptical.

"So here's my idea for redoing the bookstore," Joan began. Luke started up the program on the screen. Based on her sketch of the store's layout, and her ideas for remodelling, Harvey had come up with an illusion of walking through a three-dimensional structure. Joan could tell that the execs were impressed by that right off. "Mr. Logan said that you have to beat or join the Internet. Well, this is a compromise, remodelling it to look more attractive to the Internet generation. We'll call it the Book Site. Each section of the bookstore will be labeled with a logo or icon symbolizing its subject. For example, a picture of Einstein at the entrance to the science shelfs." Luke's favorite idea.

"So far," objected Seifer, "you're giving the customers stuff they could get on their computer, without having to drive or walk to the store. So why should they come?"

"Because we'll offer amenities they can't get on the Internet. For each section the visitor will have the option of signing up for an interest group, whose site will be maintained by your company. They can talk to each other, and they can learn of new releases from the company itself. Each section will have a summary of the subject and the major books of the subject -- maybe two summaries, one an introduction and the other in-depth. If the visitor prefers talking to a live human, the employee will be required to know at least the introduction for each section in the store. We'll make sure that the major books mentioned in the in-depth summary are immediately available in the store. For others, we will order -- and since we're in the bookstore business, we should be able to locate books at least as efficiently as the Internet competitors."

"But you're talking about remodelling, and training the staff, and the overhead of new web sites," said Seifer. "What's it going to cost?"

"Cost?" repeated Joan, flustered. "Um, I don't know."

"You're making a proposal without a cost-benefit analysis?"

"Wait," said Logan. "I asked Miss Girardi for IDEAS, not a professional proposal."

"Talk is cheap. Money costs, well, money."

Mr. Logan looked displeased. "Well, you're the accountant. YOU figure the costs. Then we'll see. Thank you, Miss Girardi, for an interesting presentation."

Interesting. Joan was trying to save her store, and all he could say was that it was interesting. Of course, he had promised earlier to be frank about the situation.

Harvey came to see them off at Logan Airport. Naturally most of his attention was on Luke. "Hope you've seen what you wanted of the University, Luke. To improve your chances of getting in, I'd suggest working on some physics project for the next couple of months. If it's impressive enough, I know some professors who will fight to get you admitted."

"Thanks, Harvey."

_Luke looks pleased. He got what he wanted from the trip. But Ali Musa is still in jail, and my bookstore is in Limbo, and I even screwed up as a chaperone. A fine adult I'm turning out to be._


	13. Blight

**Winter Journeys**

**Chapter 13**

**Blight**

_(Author's Note: the scientific talk in this chapter is from a recent book called THE GENOME, by Matt Ridley. Any mistakes are mine, not the talented Mr. Ridley's)._

The weekend was a hectic one in the Cavalo household. Jean had foreseen that motherhood would be a psychological shock for Bonnie, and had hoped to prepare her during the final months. Now the crisis was even worse than anybody had anticipated, and Jean wanted to watch over Bonnie. During her own visit Grace heard Bonnie lament that she could not even hold her baby until her arms had healed, and had been moved to sympathetic tears for nearly the first time in her life. The baby itself, of course, was two months premature and had to be treated for all sorts of problems, though the doctors assured Bonnie that its life was not in danger.

But mainly Grace stayed at the farm and helped keep it up and running. On Sunday she even helped at her least favorite chore, mucking out the stable. Returning to her Secret Garden would have to wait until Monday.

By now she was so familiar with her horse's habits -- fortunately, it seemed to have forgotten that slap on the rump -- that she could daydream while riding, giving just minimal attention to guiding her mount on the path. Thus it was a shock when she actually caught sight of the wheat field and realized that something was wrong.

Normally the wheat was a beautiful gold in color. But now nearly a quarter of the grain had turned a nasty greenish-brown color. In just two days? It was as if somebody had cursed her garden; she vaguely remembered a phrase -- from the Christian Bible, not the Torah -- about "the adversary sowing the tares among the wheat".

Snatching her cellphone from her saddlebag -- and no longer fazed by the odd clash in technologies -- she dialed the house and got Jonathan. "Something's wrong with the GE wheat patch. Please, come and have a look."

A few minutes later Jonathan rode up, and as he saw the patch, his face fell. But he was a professional farmer, and he went straight to studying the problem without thinking of ancient texts. "It looks like a plant disease spreading through the patch. Have you noticed any symptoms earlier?"

"A few stalks, Saturday. I put them in my saddlebag. But when the Bonnie matter came up, I forgot about them."

"You still got them?"

Grace checked the other saddlebag. "Yeah. But they're just speckled, not entirely brown."

"OK. We'll package the speckled stalks and the blighted ones, and have Brian take them to town to ship to the GE labs. Meanwhile, we had better cut down the blighted areas before they infect the healthy ones. I'll get the reaper."

One hour later Grace sat in her saddle at a safe distance, watching forlornly as the mechanical reaper chugged and cut through the patch. She understood the necessity perfectly well, but it made it harder and harder to visualize the area as her garden, cultivated by her own hand. What had gone wrong? Was it her fault?

On one of his turns through the patch, Jonathan caught sight of Grace's face. He presumably knew nothing of her Secret Garden fantasy, but he could tell she was upset, and could empathize with a gardener who had lost her plants. "Look, Grace, you don't need to stick around. You've been working your tail off all weekend. Take some time off, go for a ride, do something you enjoy."

"Thank you." Grace thought about it. There was an orchard she remembered from last summer, at the very edge of the farm. It was so far off that she had only visited it once then, but the visit had been delightful. So she urged her horse around and headed for the orchard.

Déjà vu. Luke had been with her then. Not being accustomed to riding horses, he had gotten up behind her and held her tightly around the waist to make sure he didn't fall off. Grace had even galloped faster than necessary just to feel him hold her more tightly. At the end he had gotten off so clumsily that he had pulled off the animal as well, but fortunately the ground was soft and the fall just seemed very funny.

Luke had not touched her since That Night, and Grace's life was not at all fun now.

Diana, the Cowgirl God, had met them in the orchard, and suddenly Grace remembered a scene from the Torah: God meeting Adam and Even in the Garden of Eden, this time not to condemn them but to exchange words of encouragement and friendship.

Then Grace reached the orchard, and felt stupid. It was winter, of course. Not only were there no apples, but most of the foliage was gone. She was riding among dead trees. Maybe the Garden of Eden after his human caretakers had been kicked out.

--------

That evening Grace was back in the farmhouse. Physically she was comfortable: now she had the room to herself without Bonnie intruding on her space. But emotionally she was strung out -- enough so to call a certain number on her cell phone for the first time in weeks.

"Luke Girardi here."

"This is Polk."

"Whoa! Grace, we're not supposed to talk. I told your parents--"

"Shut up, dude. This isn't a mating ritual. I need help."

"Um, okay. That's different. I think."

"What do you know about GE agriculture?"

"Um, it's an offshoot of research into the genome. Scientists use subtle instruments to alter the DNA of a seed cell, in the hope that it will pass the changes to all of its descendents--"

"Yadayada," taunted Grace with irritation. "That doesn't help me. The Cavalos' crop of GE wheat is dying off. What can I do about it?"

"Um, I don't know. Genetically engineering isn't like Cinderella magic, with a carriage turning back into a pumpkin at midnight. The DNA that they created may have a specific flaw, but I'm not that expert on genetics."

"A fine lot of help you are. You brag about how brainy you are, but the one time I need some expertise, you come up empty. You're as useless as Bonnie was."

"Life isn't like STAR TREK, Grace, with Scotty coming up with every solution before the hour is up. Knowledge is specialized --"

"Oh, shut up," snarled Grace, punching OFF.

----------

The next day the Cavalos found excuses to have Grace do work in or near the farmhouse. Only at the end of the day was she able to saddle her horse and ride out to her "Garden". Her worse fears were realized. The entire lot had turned nasty. Unlike her fictional heroine Mary Quite Contrary, Grace had simply been contrary. Instead of turning an abandoned garden into a paradise, Grace had taken a working field and turned it into a mess. And in the meantime, Bonnie had brought new life into the world.

---------

The next morning, while mucking out the stable, Grace was so pre-occupied that she slipped on a patch of dung and fell in the filthy straw, nearly ruining her overalls. To her that was the last straw, and she didn't even find the pun funny.

At lunch she finally made her announcement. "Mr. Cavalo -- Mrs. Cavalo -- I quit. I'm not cut out for this. I want to go home."

Mr. Cavalo sighed. "I know you're stressed out, Grace, and maybe you'd be happier spending holidays at home. But we don't have any complaints about your work."

"No complaints? My main responsibility was tending that field, and it's gone! I failed you, and I failed all those people in the Third World who were relying on the extra food."

"First, there was nobody waiting for the grain in the Third World, Grace. This was a test project. You could say that it was even good news that it failed now, before it went into production and people WERE relying on steady shipments in ton lots to stay alive."

"Besides," Jean Cavalo took over. "We're farmers, Grace. Crop failures are a fact of life. An unpleasant fact, but it's there. Don't blame yourself for fate. And as for failure, you succeeded in the one incident that really counted. The doctors said that another hour of exposure in the cold might have killed the baby, and maybe even Bonnie. You saved his life, and we will remember that every time that we look at our new child."

"And there's something I want to say," blurted out Brian. "I kept my mouth shut the entire time because I knew that you were with my cousin Luke, and would probably go back to him--"

"Ha!"

"--but you're the most wonderful girl I've ever met, Grace."

---------

A few hours later Grace was sitting in the small-town airport waiting for a plane to fly her back north to Maryland. She had demanded that Brian drive her here without even checking whether one was available; she'd prefer waiting hours in this place to staying in the farm where she had failed.

A check representing her wages was in her pocket. She was still debating whether to deposit it in Arcadia or tear it up.

Somebody walked up. "Hello, Grace."

Grace looked up reluctantly. "Diana. So where's your horse?"

"I decided to leave it behind. People might wonder how I got Pegasus through security. Grace, you left before the lab report came back explaining what happened to the wheat."

"And I suppose you can tell me what it says? You know everything."

The Cowgirl God nodded. "Shorn of a lot of scientific language, it says that in replacing the natural gene sequence with the artificial one, the biologists unwittingly left out an enzyme that protected the wheat against infection. Mistakes like that can easily happen when life hasn't passed through my evolutionary process. While tracking down the mistake, the biologists will track down the enzyme, which will make all the subsequent GE creations that much more stable."

"So what infected it? Me?"

"Not your fault. Your body is full of bacteria and viruses and some things your scientists haven't found yet. You aren't aware of them because your body's immune system keeps them in check, but they could still be passed to the plant."

"It sounds odd to hear you talk science."

"Since I know everything, I can't always match my store of knowledge to my role, though I usually try. But you needed to know about the report, to understand that it wasn't your fault."

Grace took a deep breath, feeling better. "So what was the point of the mission?"

"There wasn't a mission, Grace. You came down here by your choice. I did, though, foresee Bonnie's predicament and made sure your horsemanship was skillful enough to reach her in time. And your argument made a difference when Bonnie was tempted to keep the baby, which would have been disastrous. Keep your wages, Grace. You've earned them. By the way, keep up with the horseback riding."

"Another emergency in the future?"

The divine cowgirl smiled and waved away without an answer.

TBC


	14. In the Cold No Longer

**Chapter 14**

**In the Cold No Longer**

_(Author's Note: the incident that Grace describes to her parents happened in one of previous stories, the REVELATION OF JOAN, Chapter 2)_

Just a few days ago Harvey was telling me how intelligent I was, thought Luke. But here I'm doing something crazy, standing in the snow in front of a house where I'm not wanted. But it makes sense to me.

At last! A figure in heavy overcoat and jeans came out the front door, and he spotted enough features to convince him that it was Grace. As she reached the sidewalk, he stepped in her way. "Hello, Grace."

"Are you stalking me?"

"Um, I guess so. Except that I'm pretty harmless_." Nice manly approach, Luke. _"But you hang up on my phone calls, and I suspect you're just deleting the Emails I send--"

"Yep."

"-- so this is the only way to reach you. After that desperate call on Monday, I called my cousins and got the full story. I know about the crop failure--"

"Yeah? Well, God dropped by and said it wasn't my fault."

"But you hoped that I could fix it. Maybe, if I devoted all my study to the subject, I could. Do you want me to?

"Why do you care?"

"Because YOU seem to care. And I need to know because it determines what I'll be concentrating on for the next few months. My contact at Harvard wants me to do a physics project on string theory, to impress his department and the admissions people. But if you want me to study genetic engineering, I'll do that instead."

"And risk your acceptance at Harvard? You'd do that for me?"

"Not just for you," Luke said frankly. "When Cowgirl God met us last summer, she hinted that she wanted me to get interested in biology. With you and God pulling the same way, isn't that a big sign of what I should do?"

"Dude, only you would undercut your own case like that." Grace hesitated. "Come inside."

"But I'm not welcome there."

"Screw that. It's time to thrash things out."

Grace led Luke inside the house, and into a sort of study. Luke supposed that the rabbi was writing his sermon for tomorrow, for he was sitting at a desk with an odd combination of tools: a Torah scroll and a computer. Mrs. Polonski was reading a magazine. They looked up in surprise. "Mr. Girardi, I told you--"

"I know," said Grace, "but I have something to say, and I want everybody to hear at once."

The rabbi frowned. "Say on, then."

"Last summer -- it was June 2, to be exact -- Mom had too much to drink. You had to take her to the hospital, and you ruined a sleepover that I had at the Girardis that night."

Mrs. Polonski turned pale, and the rabbi said angrily, "We agreed not to discuss that anymore. Your mother has overcome her addiction to drink."

"Yes, but it's relevant. The next day I stayed with you guys at the hospital, but you finally sent me home. I got very lonely in this house, so I asked Luke to come over and keep me company. And since there wasn't any other convenient place for Luke to sleep, I let him share my bed."

"You mean -- November wasn't the first?" stammered Mrs. Polonski. "Last summer, you two --?

"We _nothinged_. I wasn't in the mood, to start with. But consider Luke. If he was the sort of predator you think he is, he could have taken me in my sleep. He could have overpowered me when I was awake--"

Luke rather doubted that, but thought it prudent to keep his mouth shut. Grace was running the show.

"He could have played on my emotions to get me to submit. But he did none of that. He was just _there_ for me, exactly as I asked. What happened in November was my initiative. Luke didn't seduce me; the Girardis didn't fail to protect me. I offered myself. He wanted me all along. There was clear, because once we got together--"

"Um, Grace, you don't have to go into details," Luke interrupted hastily.

"Er, yeah. And when you asked Luke to stay away, he's honored that request all along. The point is, Luke's been the perfect gentleman."

"I'd like to say something," said Luke. "I know you despise me for what I did with Grace. But I want to win back your respect. Because some day we may be members of one family. I dream of making Grace my wife some day."

_"Wife!" _yelled Grace.

"I'm glad you value my daughter so much," said the rabbi, "but a mixed marriage --"

"I understand your concerns, sir. I'd be willing to bring up our children in the Jewish faith--"

"_Children!"_ exploded Grace. "I don't intend to get knocked up any time soon! Rooming with Bonnie for a week was bad enough."

Luke hated exclude Grace from the conversation, but this might be his only chance of speaking to the rabbi. "I'd even offer to convert, myself, but I don't know of it would be intellectually honest. I was baptized a Catholic, yes, but the only really observant member of our family is my brother's wife Lily. My own religious beliefs concern God as the source of nature and its laws." And of course there were meetings with Joan's divine Friend, but Luke had never figured out how to fit that into his philosophical point of view. "Einstein and Spinoza talked about God in that way, but though they were Jewish, I know they were scarcely conventional--"

"Let's not get so far afield," said Mrs. Polonski. "Darling, Grace has been willing to forgive years of problems due to my drinking. We should be able to forgive the young people for their actions last month."

"Forgiveness implies acknowledgement of wrongdoing," said the rabbi. "Do they even realize why it was wrong?"

"I think I do," said Grace," and everybody stared at her, because Grace never admitted to being wrong. "Sex is like playing with fire, and at our age we don't have experience enough to deal with it. Look at Glynis -- the smartest, most promising girl in school, and yet her career nearly got derailed by a baby. Look at Adam -- the most sensitive boy I know, but sex tempted him away from his perfect mate Joan. Bonnie herself, looking for thrills to distract herself from her messed-up life, and messing her life up even more. Even me. I should have realized that Luke had good reasons for avoiding me after we did it, but at the time I was too excited to see anything but "he won't do it again; what I do wrong?'"

"That's worldly wisdom," observed the rabbi sadly. "not religious insight, but I suppose it will do." Luke saw a weight of sadness behind that: a realization that Mrs. Polonski's secret alcoholism had ruined their attempts to raise their daughter as a good Jewish girl, and now it was too late to undo what they considered as damage. They did not understand, of course, that Grace had her own religious instincts and that God had taken Grace under Her wing. "You'll be 18 in a few months, Grace, and I'll suppose you'll do what you like beyond that. But if you promise not to engage in sexual activity until then, you may meet with your boyfriend. And, Mr. Girardi, it seems I can trust you not to tempt Grace otherwise."

"Yes, sir."

The rabbi extended his hand. "Then welcome back to our house, Mr. Girardi. I hope you will be able to share our Hannukah celebration on at least one night."

"Thank you, rabbi, I will. Um, may I speak to Grace alone?"

"Living room," said Mrs. Polonski. Obviously the bedroom was off limits.

The two teens went into the family's living room. "I've never seen you humble yourself like that before, Grace."

"Yeah. I've had a bad week. When a field withers under your care, and you end your first job by stepping in a pile of horse crap, it's a rather humbling experience. But I'll get over it." She brightened. "At least now, we can answer the question I asked on Joan's birthday."

"Um, I don't remember it."

"Now that I've let you pat my ass, is a simple kiss still thrilling?"

They embraced, and Luke placed his lips on hers. After a few minutes, he withdrew to say:

"Yes. It is."

TBC


	15. Opening a New Book

**Winter Journeys**

**Chapter 15**

**Opening a New Book**

Christmas was now just three days away, and Joan could hear some carolers walking through the downtown streets in the light snow:

_---- Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men_

Joan was feeling little peace herself. Nobody was coming into the bookstore, not even to make last-minute purchases. The only people who had been in the store for the past two hours were Sammy and Joan, and every time Joan opened her mouth, Sammy would speculate about "saving expenses" by eliminating her position. Meanwhile the whole Ali Musa was still unresolved, hundreds of miles away in Boston.

Luke was going to visit both Grace and her parents, trying to negotiate an end to their three-way feud. Fat chance of that, Joan thought. Grace was a difficult lover and a good hater.

And the Roves had been visiting relatives in Ohio, dashing Joan's hopes of seeing Adam on her return from Boston. Now they were back, and she might see Adam tomorrow, for the first time since her grand revelation.

The bell rang over the bookstore door. At last, customers who would justify the bookstore's existence! Joan virtually raced to the door, then saw in dismay that it was Mr. Logan and Mr. Seiffer. The former was poker-faced and the latter seemed in a bad mood.

"May we speak to the manager -- ah. I'm sorry to come this close to Christmas, but it's crucial to wind this up before year end."

"Come back to my office," said Sammy, looking rather sick. If they were going to shut him down, at least he didn't want Joan to hear.

Joan sat down at the reading table and brooded. It looked like a job of more than two years had folded. She didn't really need the money, but the bookstore had symbolized other things. Independence, the Outside World. And she reminded herself that she had taken this job at divine command. Had she fulfilled all her responsibilities here? Should she have taken advantage of her position and read more? Was God going to be mad?

She heard the office door re-open, and stood up to hear the verdict as the trio came to her.

"I've renegotiated!" Sammy said in hysterical relief. Logan looked at him oddly as if surprised by the pronoun. "REDDING AND ASSOCIATES want to use this store as a flagship for a new style. I've said yes, certainly. They're going to send a project manager to help run the store a new way. That means that you better behave, Miss Girardi. No more sitting on the floor or meeting with your boyfriends here. I've been tolerant, but the new co-manager may not put with such foolishness."

"Maybe not," said Seiffer, looking amused for the first time since Joan had met him.

"When will the co-manager be coming down?" Sammy asked Mr. Logan.

"She's already here."

"Oh, I see. You were waiting for my agreement before calling her in. Well, I'm willing to meet her now."

"You already have," said Logan. "Miss Girardi, congratulations on your promotion. We've decided to give your Book Site a try."

Joan was stunned. The desperate Book Site demonstration had actually worked! Not only that, but she was being trusted to carry it out.

"Her!" said Sammy in dismay. "You mean, I can't fire her anymore?"

"No more than she can fire you," said Seiffer, "which is, of course, an idea."

"Wait!" said Joan. "I'm a high school senior -- I can't come in during the day."

"That's all right," said Logan. "You're the ideas person, not a clock-puncher. We can negotiate details later. Sammy, where are you going?"

"I need to find a nice long book to read while adjusting to the new situation," said Sammy faintly. "Like, say, WAR AND PEACE---"

----

Once she got permission to leave, Joan walked home through the streets, heedless of the snow. She passed the carolers as they were singing another song.

_Go tell it on the mountain -- over the hills and everywhere --_

The boisterous song should have filled her with good cheer, if anything. Instead it triggered a contrary wave of thought, almost as if Joan was emulating Grace.

_But Ali Musa can't go anywhere. He's in jail. And though he's Muslim and Christmas means nothing to him, it's still wrong for him to be locked up and facing injustice while everybody else is celebrating._

When she reached home the family was already eating dinner; she told them that there was a crisis at the bookstore and not to wait for her. She slipped into her chair and, when an appropriate opportunity came up, told her family about her promotion to co-manager.

"Wonderful, honey!"

"I'm proud of you, Joan."

"Wait until Harvey hears. Though it was your idea, Joan."

"Now we really have something to celebrate this year," Will continued. Tomorrow I'll cook a special holiday dish myself--"

"I won't be here," declare Joan suddenly.

"Wh-what?" stammered Helen.

"I can't sit here while Ali Musa is in jail. I'm going back to Boston."

"Who is Ali Musa?" demanded Will.

Luke told them about the unfortunate immigrant, careful to leave God out of the story.

"It's noble of you to sympathize with the man," said Will. "But you know nothing about him. He could help you in a moment of gallantry and still be guilty."

"I won't believe that. I KNOW he's innocent."

"But what do you intend to do?" asked Helen.

"I don't know. But when I think of something, I'll be there."

"When?" asked Luke. He seemed last surprised by the others; he knew about her talks with God.

"I'll go tomorrow. As soon as I've explained things to Adam."

"But tomorrow's the 23rd!" exclaimed Helen. "You may miss Christmas Eve -- Christmas--"

"I can't help that. What's the use of Christmas if you don't obey the founder of it? 'I was in prison and you visited me -- what you do to the least of these you do unto me'. I'm an adult, and I'll be using my own money. You can't stop me -- unless you want to throw me out, like Bonnie's mother."

"Never," said Will. "And certainly not for a good deed -- but --"

"It's settled," said Joan. "I'm going."

-----

When Adam opened his shed door the next morning, he did a very peculiar thing: he stepped forward as if to kiss her, then froze up. Since he was standing in the door, that meant Joan couldn't get in.

"Adam, can I come out of the cold?" asked Joan.

"Um, of course." He backed up to let Joan in, closed the door, and kept his distance.

"Adam, what's wrong?"

"I betrayed you last spring, Jane. I felt bad enough just about that, but now I know that you're somebody holy."

"Oh, crap," exclaimed Joan, not having expected this reaction. Certainly neither Luke nor Grace were inclined to hold her in awe. "There's nothing holy about me, Adam. I don't even know why God picked me. I'm a klutz. Luke and Glynis and Friedmann are smarter than me, and Grace would make a much better warrior for good. While you -- you did something so noble that Bonnie named her baby after you. Stop putting me on a pedestal, Adam, and kiss me." When he still hesitatedd, she crossed the distance herself and hugged him. Desire seemed to overcome his reluctance and he kissed her passionately.

Coming back up to breathe, Joan tried to focus on practical matters. "I had to come by, Adam, to tell you that I'll be away for a few days."

"Over Christmas? Why, Jane?"

"Unfinished business. I was supposed to get this guy out of jail, and I didn't. That's why I said I was a klutz. So I'm going back to Boston to see what I can do. I'm just sorry that it means running out on you again."

Adam stood in thought for a moment. Then: "I'll go with you."

"What!"

"You shouldn't have to spend Christmas alone, Jane. I'll come and try to help you solve your problem. Or, at least, keep you company. I got prize money from that art contest I won last September; I can use that. For two years you hid part of your life from me, Jane. Now I want to share it."

"All right -- but -- let's get one thing clear. Last time that we went out of town overnight, you assumed that I was ready to -- to go all the way. But I'm not promising that this time around. I'm still not sure I'm ready."

"I understand, Jane."

"Then pack up as quick as you can. Train leaves in two hours. Then -- I don't know what we'll do."

"We'll be together, Jane. That's what counts."


	16. Christmas Gift

**Winter Journeys**

**Chapter 16**

**Christmas Gift**

_(Author's Note: As I have stated before, the events discussed here are fictional and are not the fault of anybody in the real Boston government._

Joan looked sadly out of the hotel window. 'Twas the night before Christmas, but instead of being in a house, Joan was in a near-anonymous hotel room, staring out at a bleak winter-scape. Her only human connection was with Adam, and that was awkward, since they could neither get away from each other nor -- unite.

"I've finished getting dressed for the night, Jane," he said.

They had decided to get a single room, with double beds, to save money. The first night, self-conscious about sleeping in each other's presence, and trying not to remember that awkward night last February when they had shared a bed in the back of the Roves' truck, they had kept on their day clothes, whereupon Joan found jeans too stiff to sleep in comfortably. Tonight they agreed to wear pajamas, taking turns changing in the bathroom.

Joan turned around. Adam's upper garment was a T-shirt on which somebody -- presumably Adam himself -- had painted an abstract picture. On any other occasion Joan would have been amused and intrigued.

"What's wrong, Jane?" he asked, seeing her face.

She threw up her arms in exasperation. "It's a failure! I didn't get anywhere with the case today, and I sure won't accomplish anything on Christmas day. Monday I have to go back to Arcadia for my new job duties. And it's poisoned what could have been an enjoyable time for us. Going to bed at 9 PM! What kind of date is that?"

He walked to her. "It's not poisoned for me, Jane. I'm glad that you finally chose to include me in a mission, even if it didn't work out. I love you."

"You're in love with a klutz."

"Not in my eyes. To me you're the loveliest girl in the world. Look, Jane, I've only met your God once, but maybe she -- he, whatever -- doesn't understand human limitations. She's given you an assignment too complex to carry out. Like somebody hiring me to build a sculpture greater than Michelangelo's. It's not your fault." He sat beside her on the bed.

"I've always been able to carry them out before."

"All the more proof that you're not a klutz. So God misjudged you once. For heavens' sake, Jane, it's Christmas, when everybody gets time off. Stop trying to be a superwoman, and just be a girl."

He kissed her, and Joan, surprised by the warm feelings engulfing her and driving out the depression, wrapped her arms around him. Never had they made out like this, and Joan realized the reason: she was no longer hiding a secret from him. There were no longer barriers. He knew what she was now and loved her.

And with the idea of exposure in mind, Joan released her lover and started unbuttoning her pajama top. It was time to let Adam see her naked. She was convinced that he had wanted to for months - not just out of ordinary desire but as an artist wanting to visualize his beloved. And now she had finally built up the nerve.

"Wait - Jane -- we need to chill."

"Why?"

"We can't go all the way. I didn't bring any protection this time, because you said we wouldn't -- do that. You could get pregnant. And I know what teen pregnancy is like, from Bonnie. I can't do that to you."

"I---"

KNOCKNOCKNOCK.

Joan and Adam stared at each other, suddenly self-conscious. Joan called out: "Who is it?"

"HO! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas, Joan Girardi!" came a deep base voice from beyond the door.

Adam looked confused. "Does God ever appear as Santa Claus?"

"No. He's usually more normal than that. Try the peephole."

Adam got up as Joan rebuttoned her top and tried to get her disheveled hair back in order.

"Oh crap, it's your Dad. Better answer it, Joan -- not a good idea for him to see me like this."

"Change in the bathroom." Joan grabbed a robe. Her hair didn't matter when speaking to her father. She got to the door and hoped her father did not find the delay suspicious.

"Dad! What are you doing here?"

"Since you wouldn't come to the holiday dinner, we decided to bring the dinner to you. Plus a Christmas present." He gestured to his side.

Joan peaked around the door. "Mr. Musa! You're free!"

"Yes. Thanks be to Allah, and to your father."

"Please come in."

He looked at her robe, then away. "It would not be proper--"

"I understand," said Will. "Why don't you join my wife in the lobby, and let me explain things to my daughter for a while?"

Ali bowed and walked away. "Mom's here, too?" she asked, letting her father in.

Will nodded. "Luke is celebrating Hannukah with Grace's family, and Kevin and Lily decided to stay behind, but at least there will be the three of us."

"Four. Adam's, um, using the bathroom. But what happened?"

Will sighed. "I'll tell you, but it's not very creditable to the law enforcement system. I didn't take your case very seriously at first, but when you traveled up here and risked ruining your Christmas, I was shamed into taking action. First, I called your friend Professor Begh and told him that there was a fellow-Muslim in trouble. He agreed to put up bail and hire legal help if nothing else worked. Then I came up here. As a former police chief, I have a bit of entrée with people in law enforcement."

"Great. I couldn't even find out what the evidence was."

"There wasn't any. The whole thing was the combination of some bigoted officers and an assistant prosecutor anxious for a big case. When I called him and claimed that I had some background info on Musa in Arcadia, the prosecutor jumped at the chance to see me. He was relying on anti-Muslim prejudice and an apathetic defending lawyer to win his case. Then I told him that a brilliant law student was doing pro-bono work on Musa's behalf, and that she would make mincemeat of his arguments in court."

Joan laughed. "You didn't say the "brilliant law student" was a high school girl with one AP Law course?"

"Somehow I forgot to mention that. Once I was convinced that the prosecutor's case was worthless, I threatened to report him to the State Bar unless he released Musa immediately. He caved in."

"That's great, Dad. But he deserves to be reported anyway."

"Yeah. I'll figure out a way around that later. There's a limit to how devious I can feel on Christmas Eve."

Adam came out of the bathroom, fully dressed. "I heard the end of the story. Thanks for helping out Jane, Mr. G."

"It's something I should have done without Joan forcing me into it actually. Joan, why don't you get dressed so that we can join your mother downstairs?"

"Ok." She grabbed a blouse and a pair of jeans, and shut herself in the bathroom. First, of course, she had to remove her pajamas--

"Let me help you with that, Jojo," said a familiar voice behind her.

"Aiiiee!" screamed Joan. Nobody wanted to be startled in the nude, and particularly not by a ghost. Judith was, of course, not visible in the mirror.

"Are you all right, Joan?" came her father's voice from outside.

"Yes, Dad. Just stubbed my toe by accident." She lowered her voice. "What do you think you're doing, Judith? I nearly peed."

"At least you're in the right room for that," the other replied, with the serenity of one who no longer had to worry about such accidents. "But, seriously, Christmas Eve is a big day for ghosts. Haven't you ever read Dickens' CHRISTMAS CAROL? I volunteered to visit you, and help clear up any mysteries that may be bothering you."

Joan sighed. "OK. What was the Ali Musa case all about? I thought I was supposed to solve it, but in the end it was Dad that did it."

"Only because you motivated him into taking action. Remember ripples."

"So I was just a tool for God to reach Dad?"

"This time around, yes. But it was also intended as a learning experience, Jojo. What have you learned?"

Joan thought over the past few weeks. "To be on the alert for signs of injustice, not just counting on the system to work all the time. To keep studying law so that I'll be in a position to act on my own next time. And to realize that official law isn't the answer to everything."

"Right on. Now, I'd love to stay and chat, Jojo, but I'm supposed to go haunt somebody tonight." She kissed Joan. "Bye."

Joan emerged from the bathroom and assured her father that her "toe" was all right. Later she would find a way of explaining to Adam what happened. For the moment, they all left the hotel room to go downstairs.

Helen was in the lobby, chatting with Ali Musa. As Joan walked in she smiled: not just a Merry-Christmas smile but one that said _Darling, I'm proud of you. _Then she turned back to the freed prisoner. "Would you like to have dinner with us, Mr. Musa?"

"Thank you, madame, but I think it would be better to join my friends. Miss Girardi, I am in your debt. May Allah always be with you."

_Yeah,_ thought Joan, _I don't think I need to worry about that----_

THE END


End file.
